


Tectonic Shift

by wonderfulwrites



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderfulwrites/pseuds/wonderfulwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk and Uhura finally hash out their differences. Too bad it takes a natural disaster to get them to do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started out trying to write a K/S/U fic, but couldn't seem to get around the fact that Uhura seemed to have a lot of issues with Kirk, almost to the point of disliking him personally, so this happened instead. My thanks go to harmony_bites for answering all of my canon questions, holding my hand when the hour struck neurotic o'clock, and for pointing out that flaw in the ending that she made me rewrite. And of course, thank you to renitaleandra for providing me with access to her mad beta skillz. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Jim was lying in a pile of rubble.

And not just lying on a pile of rubble. Lying on a pile of rubble, covered in dust, with ringing in his ears and the taste of plaster and alien champagne in his mouth. He also hurt everywhere, in a sore, achy way that left him wondering what had happened and where the hell he was and why he was lying on the pile of rubble.

Something above him creaked.

Jim peered into the shadows and could just make out what appeared to be more rubble, hanging over him ominously. It looked as if someone had simply dropped a few support beams over the room then heaped plaster and huge slabs of concrete on top and called it done. It didn't look terribly safe, and seriously, what the hell was going on?

"Oh, thank god. You're awake."

A shaky and anxious Uhura was suddenly in his field of vision, hands hovering over him like a pair of swallows that couldn't decide where to land. "Are you okay? You've been out for a while."

She matched the ceiling and the rubble and the dust. The sleeve of her dress uniform was torn at the shoulder, and she had made an attempt to brush herself off, but white dust was still coating her hair and skin and clothes, and had caked in a cut on her forehead. Jim took a moment to appreciate the fact that even looking like the victim of a natural disaster she was still smokin' hot.

He gave her a cocky grin. "I'm always okay. You?"

She nodded. "I'm fine. You broke my fall."

"Ah. Good." Jim thought about that for a second. "What fall?"

Uhura's lips pressed together, and her brows dipped inward, and will wonders never cease, she was actually worried about him. "You don't remember the earthquake?"

Earthquake? That was kind of a big thing to miss. Which meant he probably hit his head, which meant another concussion. Great. Wasn't Bones just going to be ecstatic about that? "Uh, apparently not."

"Well, do you know what planet we're on?"

Jim really had to think about it. He remembered mountains and a purple sky and traveling by shuttle craft because the mountain valley where the capitol city was located played havoc with communications and transporter function.

"Elagabalus VI? To renew the Federation treaty."

She nodded. "We were attending the welcoming reception-"

"And the floor collapsed beneath us."

It was suddenly all there: the ground shaking and the screaming and being too far away from the entrance to get out before the ceiling came down and the ground opened up to swallow him whole. Someone had been nearby, and he'd grabbed them out of instinct or panic or both, and as they fell, he had twisted his body so that when they landed, he would be on the bottom. And hey, look, it had been Uhura he'd grabbed, and that was great, because she was one of his favorite people whether she liked him or not, but his mind strayed to his crew, to Bones and Sulu and the ensign from sciences whose name was nigh unpronounceable for everyone but Spock. He wondered if they had made it out, and if so, did they make it out without injury? If not, was there someone to patch them up or send them back to the _Enterprise_\--

"I think you have a concussion." Uhura's voice dragged him out of his spiraling thoughts.

He blinked at her. He couldn't do much for the others in their landing party, alive, injured, or otherwise, but he had at least one crew member left alive, and he was going to make sure she stayed that way.

"Probably." He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers at her, turning on his most charming grin. "Help me up?"

That got an eye roll. Uhura got to her feet and took his hand, but when she heaved, and he shifted to pull himself up, his vision went white in the sudden agony that flared in his left shoulder. It drowned out all other sensation; all that seemed exist was agony and more agony with a dollop of excruciating agony on top. But that kind of pain wasn't really anything new. He gritted teeth against it and rode it out as always, reminding himself that it was only pain and pain would go away if he waited long enough, and eventually it did, rolling back like the ocean retreating from the shore.

When his brain began registering other input again, Jim found Uhura hovering over him, looking very, very worried. It was actually kind of heartwarming. "What is it? Where are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, mostly, but I think my shoulder is dislocated." He tried to move his shoulder, to lift it a little off the floor to see if he was right, only to be rewarded with another ripple of blinding agony for his effort. He took a couple of deep breaths as he rode it out again, and found himself wishing Bones was there to jab him with a hypospray full of some kind of coma inducing pain killer before he shoved his arm back into the socket. But he wasn't here, which meant Jim was going to have to get his arm back into the socket on his own.

Fun. An earthquake and self-applied medical care. Nothing like a natural disaster to spice up your first diplomatic mission.

"Okay," he said when the pain had retreated enough. "Let's try that again."

"Is that a good idea?" Uhura had that concern face on again, and he could totally get used to that.

"Not a lot of choice right now." He glanced significantly at the tottering beams and slabs of concrete delicately balancing above them. "Go a little easier this time."

Her expression said she was still unsure, but she took his hand again without comment. She pulled more slowly this time. There was more of that white hot agony, but it didn't overwhelm. Even so, Jim couldn't keep back the cry of pain as she helped him into a sitting position.

"Did I hurt you?"

His head was throbbing in tandem with his shoulder now that he was sitting up, his stomach was rolling, and there definitely seemed to be a knot rising on the back of his head when he went feeling around. So, yeah, definitely a concussion.

"No," Jim said, looking her straight in the eye and lying for all he was worth. "I'm okay."

He managed to get his feet on his own, waving Uhura off when she moved into help. His head swam once he was up, and he stood there, cradling his arm to his chest, trying to convince his body that remaining upright really was nonnegotiable. Uhura's hands were hovering around him again, and his shoulder was screaming so loudly he couldn't think, but there was a wall over there, nice and solid and exactly what he needed. Before he let himself think about it too much, or let Uhura stop him for that matter, he stumbled through the rubble, braced his dislocated shoulder against the wall and pushed.

Uhura's cry of surprise and horror echoed his own roar of pain, but as soon as the shoulder was back in the socket, the pain rolled back to a respectful distance, and he was able to think again.

And Uhura, he discovered, was channeling Bones.

"What is wrong with you!" She had him by the good arm and was herding him towards a nearby bench. "There are less deranged and disgusting ways to do that, you know. Here. Sit."

She pushed him down onto the bench, and he slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. Uhura brushed at his clothes and hair, grumbling about how stupid he was, and she'd had first aid and knew how to reset a dislocated shoulder, and my God, was he just into pain or something because there were better ways to get a fix that didn't involve scaring the hell out of her. She sounded mad, but underneath the anger was worry, and he suddenly realized that she was fussing over him, _Uhura_ was fussing over him, and he couldn't help but grin as he blocked her hand when she went for his hair again.

"Uhura, stop. I'm okay." She gave him a skeptical look, but stopped fussing. "Really. I've had worse. Like, there was this one time I was trying to pick up this hot xenolinguist when four meat head cadets decided to beat the shit out of me."

She smirked. "Maybe you should have stuck to farm animals."

"Maybe, but what can I say? I've always liked variety."

The precarious debris above them selected that moment to interrupt their banter, raining rubble and dust on their heads. It wasn't very much, but they flinched and ducked anyway, shielding their faces with their hands.

When it was done, Jim eyed the crisscross of support beams as he brushed debris out of his hair, wondering how long they would hold back the tons of rubble hanging over them. "Is it just us?"

Uhura followed his gaze. "Yes, but-"

"But what?"

She didn't reply, just stood there stock still, staring upwards silently, and suddenly every instinct Jim had was screaming that there was something wrong. Her expression was blank, her eyes unfocused and distant; the woman who had just been joking with him mere seconds ago was nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by, well, he didn't know what exactly, but she was doing a fine job of scaring the hell out of him.

"But what, Uhura?"

"There was screaming for a while, from above." She was whispering, which made her behavior that much more disturbing. "Just, screaming, and I couldn't do anything to help them. But they've stopped now. I haven't heard anything since."

That sounded completely terrifying. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he was glad he'd been out for that. He wasn't sure he wouldn't have done something stupid, on the off chance the screaming had belonged to Bones or Sulu or Ensign Unpronounceable Name. Not that he wouldn't have traded places with Uhura in an instant, just so she wouldn't have had to listen to it, because it had clearly terrified the hell out of her in ways falling through the floor hadn't.

Right. They needed to get out of this death trap as soon as humanly possible, because if he wasn't mistaken, Uhura was having a flashback, and it had nothing to do with the earthquake.

Jim pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open with a flick of his wrist, only to have the cover flip right off the hinges and clatter to the floor while the body made a pathetic high-pitched gurgling noise before it fell silent.

Fantastic. He had busted his communicator in the fall. Good thing Uhura had one, too.

Jim tossed the broken communicator into a nearby mound of debris. "Uhura, did you try to hail the ship?"

She didn't reply, just continued to stare up at the debris with that blank expression.

"Uhura?"

Still no response.

"Lieutenant?" he snapped in his best command voice, and her eyes tracked back to him, glassy and distant. "Did you try hailing the _Enterprise_?"

Her eyes drifted over his head to the wall. "The mountains are made of cavilite, remember?"

Jim sighed. Right. Cavilite ore. It would have been the bane of transporters and communicators everywhere, but it was so rare as to only exist in small deposits on Elagabalus VI. Of course, that was only fortunate if you weren't trapped on Elagabalus VI inside a mountain range riddled with the stuff. It had caused sporadic reception on their communicators above ground, and being underneath a few tons of rubble wasn't going to help any. And no communicators meant no transporter beams. So. Next question.

"Okay, then do you know where we happen to be?" He looked around the room. It was some sort of basement, with rough hewn stone walls that sparkled with black cavilite. What little light they were getting was coming from track lighting rimming the room, probably on an auxiliary system, since the wall sconces were dark. An information podium encircled by a scatter of colorful brochures stood on one wall, next to an entrance way that opened like a mouth on impenetrable darkness. Glossy, three dimensional posters papered the walls, showing the Elagabalans in strange dress, eating and working and doing other day to day things. "Because this doesn't seem to be a part of the parliament house."

"It's the Elegabalus VI Reenactment Museum." Animation was bleeding back into Uhura's face, and Jim tugged on her wrist, guiding her gently down onto the bench next to him. "Part of it lies under the city."

"Yeah?" he said, just to keep her talking, to make sure she came back from whatever nightmare place she'd been visiting.

"The original city was built inside the mountain range throughout a network of caves. It's usually open to the public four days a week for tours and reenactments, but a part of it is being renovated, so it has been closed the last two months." Jim raised an eyebrow at her rather specific knowledge of the museum. Uhura rolled her eyes and conjured out of nowhere one of the colorful, multi-page brochures scattered on the floor. Well, she seemed to be back to her old self, or getting there, anyway. "I read the brochure while you were out."

"Right." He gestured towards the gaping black hole in the wall. "So that?"

"Leads into the underground city. There were only four entrances. This is one." Uhura opened the brochure and studied it. "The other three are spaced out along the network at about two miles each."

"Right." Jim's eyes automatically went to the dome of debris over their heads. So at least two miles to the nearest exit. An hour's walk, more or less. Not fun, but doable, and certainly preferable to staying here and waiting for the rubble to bury them. "We should get going."

"I had a feeling you were going to say that." Uhura didn't look too excited.

"Well, this exit is blocked, and I don't trust all that rubble not to come crashing down on our heads." On cue, the debris groaned and shifted, raining down more dust and rubble. They ducked and shielded their faces. "See?"

"Yeah." She took a deep breath, brushed brusquely at her dress jacket. "Okay. Let's do it."

"Does that thing have a map?"

She nodded and unfolded it from the back of the brochure to demonstrate.

Jim clapped his hands together. "Great. Perfect. A map, a way out—" He glaced at the mouth of the cave. It was so dark that it was like looking into the black of space, but not nearly so inviting. Jim wasn't thrilled about walking a couple miles in that kind of dark. "But no light. See a light panel anywhere?"

Uhura didn't reply, just stood and walked into the darkness of the cave where she was suddenly and miraculously illuminated by watery yellow light. It seemed the same track lighting giving them light here also lined the floor of the cave, marking out a path into the darkness.

"Oh," Jim said. "That's convenient."

"That's also why I'm going to be in charge of the map." She glanced upwards nervously, and Jim wondered if that blank look was going to make a return. "We should get going before the ceiling collapses."

Jim scowled at her in mock indignation. "Hey, who's the captain here?"

Uhura didn't answer, just flashed her eyes at him in annoyance and started down the passage, hips swaying, long ponytail swinging.

"I could write you up for this!"

Her voice came echoing back at him. "Have at it, _Captain_. Now come on, before I have to dig you out of that rubble."

"Yes, ma'am," Jim muttered, amused, and got up to follow, just as the lady ordered.


	2. Chapter 2

They walked the first half a mile in silence. It wasn't bad going; the cave floor stayed fairly even, and the track lighting operated on automatic motion sensors, lighting up at twenty meter intervals, twinkling on the flecked surface of the cavilite-veined walls. Their footsteps seemed loud in the still silence, echoing around them, and the cave itself was cool and dry, the chill pleasant through the thick fabric of his dress uniform.

Not far in narrow doorways began to appear, covered by brightly colored hangings that stirred and billowed as they passed. When they came to a fork where the passage split into two arms and Uhura stopped to study the map, Jim peeked into one out of curiosity. It was a small room, only a few feet bigger than a holding cell in the brig on the _Enterprise_, with a pallet on the floor, a single table, and a woven hanging on the wall.

"This is a lower income residential area." At the sound of Uhura's voice, Jim pulled his head out of the room and let the hanging slip closed. "Whole families used to live cramped into those."

"Sounds unpleasant." Jim wandered closer to her and leaned against the wall, rubbing his aching shoulder absently.

"I'm sure it was." She was studying the map closely, tilting it towards the light. "If my mother were here, she'd lecture us on the correlation between space and income in ancient cultures."

Jim's eyes idly dropped to her legs, probably his favorite part of her, long and lean and perfectly shaped. "You mother is an anthropologist?"

"An archaeologist," she muttered absently, then out of nowhere snapped, "Do you mind?"

Jim jerked his eyes up, startled by her shift in tone.

She was giving him that look, that withering, contemptuous look that had sent weaker men scurrying away with their tails between their legs. It was a look with which Jim was quite familiar, and at this point he was mostly desensitized to it, but it was also a look he knew meant business. Nyota Uhura was pissed, and God help you if you got in her way.

"Uh, sorry."

She curled her lip in disgust and marched down the right fork without another word.

"Damn it," he muttered as he pushed himself off the wall and followed after. "Hey, Uhura. Wait."

She didn't stop, so he stepped up his pace a little to catch up. His concussion didn't appreciate the extra exertion, but there were more important things, like not alienating his communications officer with earthquake rubble behind them and a mountain on top of them. "Look, sorry. Really. Old habits and all that."

Uhura stopped and whirled on him. "Old habits? You're calling borderline sexual harassment old habits?"

Jim stared at her, stunned. "Sexual harassment? Hell, Uhura. I was just looking at your legs."

"Just looking? I am a member of your crew, not your own personal peep show. Be a professional for once."

And then she was off again, leaving him gaping at her. Sexual harassment? He'd never – that was-

Jim's heart lurched, just as it had when the _Enterprise_ dropped out of warp to find seven starships drifting in pieces above Vulcan. He had thought he was being good. He hadn't hit on her in months; he had stopped all that as soon as he had seen her on the transporter pad with Spock. They were together and it was basic human decency to stop pursuing someone who had already been caught. Okay, maybe there had been a bit of harmless flirting, but that had been met in the usual way with a lot eye rolling and amused exasperation on Uhura's part. But no hostility, nothing to tell him he was out of bounds, something he could always count on her for. But sexual harassment? Had his understanding of her reactions been that far off?

This was bad. Epically bad.

Jim hurried after her again, ignoring the dizziness and nausea and intensifying throbbing of his head. "Uhura! Wait."

Her pace didn't slow, and Jim pressed forward, his breathing beginning to become labored. He was just about on top of her when she suddenly swung around, hand on her hip, and he had to stumble back just to avoid plowing into her.

"And furthermore, where do you get off watching me undress?"

He stared at her a minute, trying to catch his breath, and you know, figure out what the hell she was talking about. "What?"

"That day, before the _Kobayashi Maru_? You were under the bed, watching me undress. Explain to me how that wasn't creepy and perverted."

It took him a second to catch up with her. She was talking about that day in her dorm room, when Gaila had made him hide under the bed, and Jim found himself learning about intercepted transmissions and destroyed Klingon armadas while Uhura undressed and Gaila made semi-interested noises. That was almost five months ago, though now it seemed like a thousand years with all they had been through – the destruction of Vulcan, their near deaths in the black hole of Nero's ship, the funerals, the promotions, the launch of their five year mission - but clearly it had been bothering her for quite a while.

Look at a woman's legs, open Pandora's Box. Who knew?

"Look, that wasn't my fault. Gaila made me get under the bed." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he winced. Not the right thing to say, not by a long shot.

Uhura tilted her head to the side, her eyebrows darting upwards. "Did she also make you watch me undress?"

"Watch you undress?" She was making it sound so dirty. "No, Uhura. It wasn't like that." Well, okay, he had leaned forward to see her better, but when he recognized her voice and saw the clothes coming off, he had been sort of inexorably drawn forward…

Oh no. Maybe it was like that. He hadn't intended it to be, he had just been impulsively indulging his unrequited attraction, but if he were looking at it from her point of view, well, no wonder she couldn't stand him.

"Wasn't like that?" she said, aghast. "God, you really were watching me."

Jim stared at her a moment, suddenly realizing that she had only assumed he had been watching her. Well, now she knew for sure. This was just getting worse and worse. "Yes, but it wasn't like that. I mean, yes, it was. Sort of. And I was completely in the wrong, but I didn't intend-"

"But I didn't intend what?" Her tone was waspish, and her outrage was practically a living thing. Jim had the distinct impression that there was no explanation or apology he could give right now that would appease her.

Damn it. Just, damn it.

"I don't know," he snapped, frustrated. He had a concussion, the rest of the landing party might be dead, and they had to walk miles through an alien reenactment museum in hopes of getting somewhere to hail the _Enterprise_, and here she was, dragging out ancient history, expecting explanations and apologies that she didn't in the mood to accept right now. "I apologized. What else do you want me to say?"

She shook her head and sighed. "You just have no idea, do you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." She waved him off with a dismissive gesture. "Don't worry about it."

And then she was off again, this time at a more moderate stride, hips swinging, back straight and head held high with the self-righteous air of the grievously wronged. Jim followed, pissed off because try as he might, he just couldn't get through to her, not with flirting, not with humor, not with keeping his distance, and not with apology or explanation. She didn't like him, and yeah, he'd burned a lot of bridges with her, but try as he might to rebuild them, they always seemed to crash down just when he thought he was making progress. It was almost enough to make him wonder if befriending Nyota Uhura was one of those no-win scenarios he didn't believe in, and if it was, how the hell was he ever going to keep himself from trying to change that?

The corridor branched again, this time in three different directions. Uhura took the one on the far right, and Jim trudged after her a few feet behind, losing sight of her once or twice as the corridor twisted, but the report of her boots echoed back at him, so he was always aware of where she was even when he couldn't see her.

Until her footsteps suddenly stopped.

A jolt of fear shot through him; maybe it was an overreaction, but they had just survived an earthquake on an alien planet, and he wasn't in the right mindset to think the best of the situation right now.

"Uhura?"

No response.

Jim hurried around the twist where she had disappeared, hoping she had stopped to wait for him to catch up, only to find the corridor came to a dead end at two doors.

He stood there staring at them, confused by the abrupt stop. The doors were identical, set side by side with an Elagabalan label in the center of each that he couldn't read. A red light blinked over one door, but not the other, and then it hit him, and he was so going to blame the concussion for not catching on right away.

They were bathrooms.

Jim was suddenly very aware of his thirst and the desire to rinse off the dust and debris. After a brief hesitation, he took the door without the blinking light. The right choice, since the room was blessedly empty of a certain communications officer, because after their little confrontation, how bad could walking through the wrong door have been? He went right to the sink, splashed water on his face, eagerly rinsed the grit and smell of plaster and dust off of his skin, drank mouthful after mouthful of cool water. It was fabulous, absolutely amazing, right up until his stomach lurched and bucked and sent him rushing to the toilet.

He barely made it before the water, h'or dourves and alien champagne he'd had at the reception came up. By the time he was reduced to bringing up bile and dry retching, he was ready to die, to just curl up right there on the floor and wait for death. His stomach and back were sore from the heaving, and his head and shoulder were throbbing so badly that his vision blurred with unshed tears. He hadn't been in this much pain since getting his ass kicked on the _Narada_, and at that point, he'd had so much adrenaline and endorphins racing through his veins that he's barely noticed it until Bones hauled him into Sickbay for treatment.

Jim kneeled back and rested his weight on his heels. He wiped his mouth with the edge of his sleeve, wondering if he had it in him to get to his feet again and not finding it all that likely.

"You better not die on me, Jim Kirk."

Jim looked up to see Uhura standing over him, hands on her hips. She sounded angry, but Jim could see the worry in her expression, the anxiety. He appreciated it, he really did, but he wished she would stop running hot and cold on him.

"'M not gonna die." The room was spinning, so he moved to sit against the wall, which didn't really help that much, but at least he wasn't going to topple over and hit his head on the toilet over here. "It's just a concussion."

Uhura made a skeptical sound. "Yeah? Well, you don't look too good."

"I don't feel too good, either." He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. His stomach was still rolling, and he was sore and he was tired and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to stretch out on the floor and go to sleep.

"Kirk."

He heard her, but didn't feel up to opening his eyes. He thought she might have said his name again, but he was slipping into a really nice place, all dark and quiet. He still hurt, of course, but he wouldn't be able to feel it when he was unconscious.

Agony flared in the joint of his left shoulder.

Jim jerked away and opened his eyes to find Uhura crouched in front of him, digging her thumb into the bruised flesh at the joint of his shoulder.

He slapped away her hand. "What are you doing?"

"Saving your life." Uhura stood and grabbed Jim by his uninjured arm. "Come on, get up."

He didn't argue, didn't have the energy to argue, just let her guide him to his feet, his body protesting loudly and painfully. "Did Bones teach your first aid classes?" He leaned back against the wall and ignored the desire to sit down again. "Because you've totally got his bedside manner."

"Look at me." Uhura took his face in both hands and tilted it so she could stare into his eyes. It threw him off – she didn't like him, yet this was a familiar kind of touching – until he realized that she was staring at his eyes, not into them. "Your pupils look normal. You probably aren't brain damaged, but I think your concussion is worse than we thought."

He grinned at her, not at the usual wattage due to the current circumstances, but he figured she got the idea. "What, no brain damage jokes?"

Her focus shifted, and now she was looking solemnly into his eyes. "Not this time."

Jim frowned at her behavior, at the way she was suddenly being kind to him and standing in his personal space and touching him. It wasn't something he would complain about under other circumstances, but right now it seemed off, not just because it was Uhura, but because she seemed afraid, and fear was not an emotion he normally associated with her. She seemed to take on the world like a cornered cat, claws out, proud and fearless and determined. He doubted he would ever in a million years find her clinging to his arm like a damsel in distress and going on about being frightened, but here she was, afraid, not just concerned, not just anxious, but honestly and truly afraid.

"Hey, really." He caught her by the wrists and gently pulled her hands away. "Don't worry about me. I'll be okay. I'm an old hand at concussions."

She just nodded and stepped away, moving away towards the sink. "Here," she said, activating the faucet. "Come get cleaned up, and then we'll go."

Jim did as she said, splashing water on his face and trying unsuccessfully to rinse the taste of bile from his mouth. Uhura stood nearby, alert and ready to rush in should he decide to topple over. When he was done, she hauled him out into the corridor, supporting him with an arm around his waist. He rested his good arm over her shoulder, putting him close enough to smell the vanilla scent of her perfume under the dust and sweat, and Spock really was just the luckiest bastard in all of Starfleet.

They retraced their steps back to the fork, and Uhura steered them down the middle arm, their footsteps echoing off the stone walls.

"Okay, Kirk, talk to me," she said when they were on their way again.

"About what?" His head was clearing nicely, and although the urge to curl up on the floor and never get up again was still there, he wasn't overwhelmed by it.

"I don't care. Just talk."

He thought on it a moment, his thoughts rolling back to their argument. Well, no better time, considering how solicitous she was at the moment. "I'm sorry that you've felt harassed."

"Kirk," she said, turning his name into a warning.

He ignored her. "I respect the fuck out of you, whether you believe it or not, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I don't have an excuse for it other than the fact that I'm an asshole, but you knew that."

"Look, let's talk about that later, when you're not concussed."

"To hell with later. You want me to talk, and I want to talk about this."

She sighed. "What is there to say?"

"That I never intended to make you feel uncomfortable?" He stopped and pulled out of her embrace, needing to face her for this. "That I'm freaked the hell out that you used the phrase 'sexual harassment' because I had no idea?"

She crossed her arms and eyed him warily, like she couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I have been trying, you know. The _Enterprise_ is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I want the ship, I want to be captain, and I don't want to risk any of it because I'm-"

"An insatiable manwhore?" she said archly, and it stung.

Jim just stared at her. "You know, I can never tell when you're joking."

Uhura shifted uneasily, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." She sighed. "Look, when I accused you of sexual harassment, I was lashing out. I'm sorry. I should have never let you think that you make me that uncomfortable. I would have put in a complaint ages ago if that were true."

Relief washed over him. "So I'm not imagining that I have successfully reformed myself?"

"No, you aren't." Her expression of shame deepened into guilt. "God, Kirk, I'm sorry I let you think that even for a few minutes. But you flirted with me relentlessly for three years, and I never felt you were out of bounds. Utterly ridiculous and annoying beyond belief, but never out of bounds. But when I caught you under Gaila's bed—"

"You assumed the worst because of our history."

"Yes. And that's been eating away at me for a while."

"Hey, I understand about things eating away at you." And he did. There was even a list, a short and bitter list. "When you caught me looking at those perfect legs of yours-"

"Watch it, Kirk."

"-it was the straw that broke the camel's back?"

"Something like that." Then her contrition fled, and she pinned him with her 'I can't believe we're the same species' look. "But don't think I'm not utterly furious that you really were watching me."

"Yeah, I know." Now he was the one shifting uneasily, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry. There will be no repeats, I promise. I'm actually not a peeping Tom or any other variety of pervert, you know."

Uhura smirked. "Well, at least not the creepy kind."

Talk about running hot and cold, now she was joking about it. Not that he was complaining, of course.

"Point taken," he said with a solemn nod. "I'm not actually a peeping Tom or any other _creepy_ variety of pervert."

"See, Kirk?" she said, still smiling. "Now, I believe you."

"Yeah? So, does that mean I'm forgiven?" Wow, that came out a little more desperate than he intended, but there finally seemed to be some productive bridge mending going on here, so his pride was just going to have to take that hit.

"Yes." Her smile fell away. "Am I?"

Uhura actually looked uncertain, which was ridiculous. He liked her, always had, from the minute she refused to tell her his name in that bar back in Iowa. She had never quite caved to his charm which always made her an entertaining challenge, and he had been beyond pleased to see her request for permanent assignment on the _Enterprise_ come across his desk. Sure, they had had some unpleasant misunderstandings and offenses between them, but if he wasn't mistaken, they were in the middle of clearing the air. He was happy to forgive if it meant they could move on.

Jim was elated by all of this bridge building, and this time he managed to give her a nearly full wattage grin. "Of course! That goes without saying. Just say something next time, you know, like you usually do."

She nodded. "I will."

"Great. Thrusters on full, then?"

"If you say so, but we should probably take that literally and keep moving." She glanced significantly into the darkness ahead. "Miles to go and all that."

"Yeah. Good idea." Jim ignored the sting of his pride as he put his good arm over her shoulder again, but he just wasn't going to get very far on his own. "I was getting tired of all this girly touchy-feely stuff, anyway."

Uhura's arm slid around his waist, trying not to smile, but unable to stop herself. "I really want to tell you to shut up, but I need you to keep talking."

"I can do that." Jim thought about it a minute. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I drove an antique car into a quarry?"

"No," Uhura said with a sigh. "But why am I not surprised?"


	3. Chapter 3

"You're not talking, Kirk."

Jim opened his eyes to see Uhura leaning in the doorway, one slender leg that he was definitely not looking at crossed casually over the other. She had the map out and was studying it again, head bent, her whole form silhouetted by the auxiliary lighting in the corridor. The words 'Spock' and 'luckiest bastard in Starfleet' crossed his mind again briefly.

"Why do I have to do all the talking?"

"Because you're the one with a concussion, and I'm trying to keep you from falling asleep."

"I wasn't falling asleep." It wasn't a lie. He was merely resting his eyes and letting his consciousness drift towards that dark, quiet place. He'd gone woozy after they walked for twenty minutes or so, and Uhura had insisted he rest for a little while as soon as they came to a place she deemed acceptable to stop. That happened to be the artisan district, and it turned out the ancient Elagabalan upholsters really knew how to pad a couch or divan or whatever the hell it was he was sprawled on.

"Talk to me, Kirk," Uhura said with enough steel in her voice to make him wonder why she was wearing red and not gold.

Jim sighed. "Fine. I have a question for you."

She didn't even hesitate. "No."

"Come on. It's not about sex, I promise. Turning over a new leaf, here, remember?"

Uhura sighed in exasperation. "Okay, fine. Go ahead. But I reserve the right not to answer."

"Of course." He paused, trying to think of the best way to ask, and finally, settled on, "So, if you don't like me, why did you request the _Enterprise_?"

She jerked her eyes up from the map. "If you're wondering if it's because that's where Spock was assigned--"

He wasn't, actually, but she was certainly quick to jump to that conclusion. Now he had to ask. "Was it?"

"No. My career has always come first." She returned her attention to the map, but he was pretty sure she wasn't actually looking at it anymore. "Besides, when I requested to stay on board, I thought he was going to the Vulcan colony."

"Then why?"

She folded up the map and slipped it back inside of her sleeve where she had been keeping it. "We should get going. I think we only have another half mile to go."

Oh, avoidance behavior. Interesting. "You're not going to answer my question, are you?"

She stepped out into the passage and looked off into the distance as if she could see anything in all that darkness. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to stay still much longer."

"Actually, we're probably doing more damage than good with all the walking. Concussions are usually treated with rest." He shifted around in an attempt to find a position that reduced the throbbing in his head. No dice there, but at least the rest of his body was more comfortable. "I should rest a little more, and you should at least tell me why you don't want to answer my question."

Uhura whipped her head around and glared him. "For God's sake, Kirk, can we just walk?" Her voice was so loud that Jim flinched, and even Uhura looked a little startled by her outburst as the echo bounced down the passageway and deeper into the mountain. She took a deep breath then said in a more reasonable tone, "Please?"

"Yeah. Okay." Damn, he'd pushed too far again. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," she said, drifting back into the room. "Need some help?" She was going hot and cold on him again; he wished she'd pick one emotion and stick with it.

"I don't think so." Jim sat forward, his body already protesting the movement. He took a deep breath, braced himself for the inevitable pain, hauled himself up --

\-- and nearly toppled over in a bright wash of pain and vertigo. One minute, he was sure the stone floor was coming up at him, then suddenly Uhura was there, arm around his waist, talking to him, telling him it was all right, to just give it a minute and for god's sake don't pass out. He leaned against her, letting her support him, one arm over her shoulder, his forehead against her temple, breathing in her mingled scent of dust, sweat, and that vanilla perfume.

"I'm okay," he said when he could talk again. He may not have brain damage, but it was one hell of a concussion. "Really, I'm okay."

"Kirk, I was wrong. We shouldn't do any more walking."

"No." He drew himself up and put more of his weight on his own two feet. His head was still swimming, but he could keep moving, even though he knew he wasn't up to walking on his own yet. He could. He had to. "You said we were close. Let's get there, and then I'll rest."

"I really don't think-"

"Do I need to make it an order?"

"Fine," she said sharply, adjusted her grip on his waist, and pulled him forward. "I'm warning you, though. If you die, and McCoy kills me for letting that happen, I will pursue you through the afterlife like the gadfly after Io."

"Your anger will be of mythic proportions," he said as she maneuvered him back into the corridor and got them moving again. "Got it."

"There will be epic poems and everything."

"I'll keep that in mind. But I don't think it will come to that. Walking seems to help clear my head."

"If you say so."

She sounded skeptical, but the vertigo really was clearing out, and the headache was receding back into the dull throb it had been before he stood. Unfortunately, this was only a short grace period before the affects of the concussion made themselves known again. He was deteriorating so quickly that at this point, he was moving purely on willpower, and eventually, even that wasn't going to be enough to keep him going. Uhura certainly wouldn't be able to carry him, and their only chance of getting out of this alive – amendment: _Jim's_ only chance of getting out of this alive - was the exit up ahead. Here was hoping their luck maintained and the earthquake hadn't blocked the exit with a cave in or something like that.

"So, do you know who Hoshi Sato is?"

Uhura's voice startled him out of his thoughts. Jim glanced at her. Her eyes were on the ground in front of them, the corners of her mouth turned down slightly, her brows furrowed. She was thinking hard on something, probably this Hoshi Sato, and he wondered why she had brought her up.

"No. The name seems familiar, but I can't place it."

"Hoshi Sato was the first communications officer on the _Enterprise NX-01_." The passage was widening, the ceiling was rising, and their voices were beginning to echo around them, giving him a sense of increasing space ahead. "The communications building at the Academy is named after her."

"Ah, yeah. Okay. What about her?"

"She taught me Romulan."

The statement seemed to be the beginning of something more, he had no idea what, but he could feel it, lingering there between them, unspoken but eager to be said.

"She was our neighbor when I was ten." Uhura smiled sadly; Jim could tell by that smile alone that Hoshi Sato had been important to her. "She was well into her hundreds by then. My mother was away on a dig that year, and my father worked long hours, so she often watched me after school. She was amazing. Absolutely amazing. She would tell me stories about serving on the _Enterprise_ and exploring the galaxy and meeting Vulcans and Klingons, and I could listen to her for hours. By the time she died, there was nothing else I wanted to do more than become a xenolinguist and join Starfleet."

Uhura fell silent again, and though Jim knew she wasn't finished yet, he resisted his desire to urge her on. He was getting an answer to his question, deeper and more interesting than expected, and now would probably be an excellent time to keep his mouth shut.

"As soon as I heard that they were rebuilding the _Enterprise_," she said at last, just when Jim was starting to think she really wasn't going to finish, "I knew that was where I was going to serve and nothing was going to stop me. I didn't let Spock put me on the _Farragut_, and I was certainly not going to let some Iowa farm boy who couldn't keep his eyes to himself keep me from requesting the _Enterprise_ as my permanent assignment."

Fascinating, as Spock would say. He had just learned a lot of very interesting information about Uhura in a very short time. He could think of half a dozen questions to ask off the top of his head, but his instincts were telling him not to push right now, and his instincts rarely steered him wrong. So he sighed forlornly instead, as if she had just broken his heart. "And here I thought you requested the _Enterprise_ because you were madly in love with me."

He could practically hear her roll her eyes at him. "Dream on, Kirk. Although…"

Oh, this sounded interesting. "Yes?"

"It's not horrible, serving under you. You're not a half bad Captain when you're using your powers for good instead of evil."

Jim tried to keep the grin off his face. Wonders really would never cease. Nyota Uhura was actually complimenting him in a back handed sort of way, but in the interests of all the bridge mending they were doing, he wasn't going to gloat about it. "Oh, stop. Your faint praise is overwhelming me."

"Someone has to keep that ego in check." Her voice was deadpan, but when Jim glanced her way, he saw a teasing little smile curling her lips.

"Trust me, between you, Bones, and Spock, I'm lucky I still have one." They had come to a wide stairway leading upwards, the steps carved into the bedrock of the cave itself. "Let me guess. Up?"

Uhura nodded and readjusted her grip on his waist again. "Up."

The flight was short, thankfully, but by the time they managed to get to the top, Jim was panting.

Uhura was looking at him in concern. "We need to stop."

"No, we're too close." Now he was tugging her forward. If he let her stop him, he didn't think he would move again. "Come on. You can answer another question while we walk."

"What is this, twenty questions?"

"You're the one who wants me to talk."

She huffed impatiently. "Fine. Go ahead."

Jim hesitated a moment. His question might be a bridge burning kind of question, but hell, it wasn't like she absolutely had to answer. "What did you mean when you said that you didn't let Spock put you on the _Farragut_?"

Dead silence, except for the staccato rap of their footsteps on the stone floor. He hadn't really expected an answer, but of all the things she had said about requesting the _Enterprise_, that little nugget about Spock had been the one to catch his attention.

"None of my business, huh?"

"Well, no, it isn't, but I'll answer it anyway. When we answered the distress call from Vulcan, I wasn't originally assigned to the _Enterprise_. Spock assigned me to the _Farragut_ because he was, and I quote, 'trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism.'"

Jim nodded. "Because of your relationship. I can see why he would be concerned."

"Oh, I know. Believe me, that was something that was always on our minds, and it was a point of contention more than once. But I had several glowing recommendations from my professors for the assignment, and every choice I made at the Academy was meant to get me on the _Enterprise_, and he assigned me to the _Farragut_ because he was worried we'd be discovered? I hadn't worked that hard just to lose my dream to his squeamishness, so I marched over to him right there in the hanger and made him change it."

She paused, shook her head. "I did apologize for it later. He was trying not to let our private relationship affect our professional relationship, and those assignments were only temporary, made by the commanders in an emergency situation. We both could have been in a great deal of trouble, but I had tunnel vision about being assigned to the _Enterprise_ and I wanted to take any and every opportunity to prove myself and get a permanent assignment.

"No, I would have exactly done the same thing in your position. Don't feel like you were in the wrong. He knew that the _Enterprise_ was your goal and he was the one who made his decision based on your relationship instead of your qualifications." And that was actually pretty hilarious, Spock trying to hide the quasi-unethical relationship with his teaching assistant, but Jim had a better sense of self-preservation than to mention his amusement to Uhura, especially since she was so torn about it. "And between the two of us, your way of getting onto the _Enterprise_ wasn't anywhere near as career damaging or as unprofessional as mine." Jim hesitated, then added, "Besides, you know that if you hadn't-"

"Yeah," she said, cutting him off. "I've thought about it. And I can't keep from wondering who went in my place instead."

Survivor's guilt. Between the lost starships and Vulcan, there wasn't a person who had been on the _Enterprise_ who didn't feel some measure of guilt for surviving it when so many others hadn't.

"Uhura?"

"What?"

"I'm glad you didn't let Spock put you on the _Farragut_."

She didn't reply, just frowned and nodded her head.

They walked the rest of the way in solemn silence, their shadows stalking along the walls beside them.


	4. Chapter 4

"I was afraid of this."

Jim glared at his communications officer. Nothing good ever came out of someone saying _I was afraid of this_. "Of what?"

Uhura untangled herself from him and fussed with the map. "See that squiggle?" She held it open for him to see. "I couldn't decipher this symbol or the word they give for it."

Jim blinked at the map, trying to make sense of what Uhura was pointing at, but he couldn't distinguish one squiggle from another. He couldn't decide if it was concussion that made the map look like nothing more than twisting lines overlaid with meaningless symbols and Elagabalan words, or if it was just that incomprehensible. If it was the latter, and she could read that mess, he was putting Uhura on navigation as soon as they got back to the ship.

"Let me guess, you do now?"

She nodded. "Blocked exit, more or less."

They both looked up at the solid concrete wall that should have been an exit to the outside world.

Jim swallowed back a string of colorful curses. "How far is the next exit?"

"About another two miles, but you're not going that far." Her head was bent over the map again. "We're going to find you a place to rest, and I'll go ahead to the exit."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of bossy?"

"Well if it's a problem, by all means, feel free to bring me up on charges of insubordination when we get out of here." She studied the map for a minute longer then stuffed it back up her sleeve. "The meeting hall is just beyond the next bend. If there's nothing there, there's another residential district after that."

Jim wanted nothing to do with more walking, but Uhura's plan was sound, no matter how much it stung his pride. He would have come up with the same plan if their places were reversed, so he stubbornly trudged onwards on his own, though Uhura stayed right next to him, trying to pretend she wasn't hovering. Around the bend they went, past another pair of restrooms, up three wide steps, and the sound of their footsteps was suddenly being thrown off into the far distance. There was a sense of openness in front of him, as if he was standing in front of the view screen on the bridge with the whole of space unfurled before him, and somewhere further ahead, he could hear the trickle of some distant water source mingling with the echo of their footsteps.

They were approaching a doorway ahead, tall and wide, the edges carved with coiling lines and swirling designs. As they stepped through, the auxiliary lighting flickered on, not just on the path before them, but from high above, shining down on them in what was a near flood of light compared to the lighting they had become accustomed to.

Both he and Uhura stopped, mouths agape at the sight before them.

The cavern was huge, positively enormous, rising several hundred feet above them in a dome, lined with hanging stalactites that glimmered with huge ribbons of cavilite ore. A forest of stalagmites grew upwards from the floor, twice as tall as a man and reaching towards the cavern ceiling like crooked fingers, sometimes merging with a stalactite to form a slender, twisting column. A shallow amphitheater had been carved into the bedrock with a raised dais in the center, and above it all hung an enormous stalactite with a finely honed point, elaborately carved with looping squiggles and overlapping coils and twining lines in some sort of pattern that he couldn't quite make out.

"Wow." Jim gazed at the cavern around them, at the thick gleaming veins of cavilite ore running through the rock, at the strange misshapen columns that stretched between the floor and the dome of the cave, at the sharp point of the massive stalactite suspended over the amphitheater.

Uhura nodded, her face turned upwards. "It's beautiful."

They both drifted forward to the edge of the crater, where velvet ropes politely blocked access to the amphitheater.

"Seat of government or religion?" Jim asked, figuring Uhura had read that brochure thoroughly.

"Both." Jim was right; she didn't even bother to pull it out. "Their council of elders were considered to be ordained by the gods and served the city according to their divine will."

"I take it that there was some significance to building it under a giant stalactite?"

"They call it the Dagger of Cobol. The ancient Elagabalans believed that if you stood beneath the dagger and lied to the assembled, the dagger would strike you dead on the spot." She turned to Jim. "There's nowhere to rest here. Let's see what else there is."

Jim let her lead again as they followed the path described by the track lighting, circling amphitheater and passing through the forest of stalactites and stalagmites and delicate hybrid columns, all carved with the same designs as the Dagger. They crossed a narrow bridge over a small, crystal clear stream, the origin of the trickling sounds he had heard, and often stepped over piles of shattered rock, smaller stalactites that must have crashed to the floor during the earthquake. No, this was no place to stop and rest. Bones would have an aneurysm if he had to dig an elaborately carved stalactite out of his chest.

On the far side, they met another flight of stairs that went up and up and up with an air of unholy menace. Just the thought of having to climb it in his condition made him feel like he was going to topple headlong into a dark pit.

"You didn't mention steps," he said, and he would deny with his last dying breath that it had come out as a whine.

"Sorry." Uhura was eyeing him with concern again. "Can you do it?"

Jim scoffed and put on a brave face, even though he was seriously considering the risk of catching falling stalactites with his body rather than climbing these insidious stairs. "Of course."

Uhura let out a sigh of long suffering and gestured him onwards. Jim managed about five steps before he started to feel as if his feet had turned to stone, and every step up was a nightmare of vertigo and disorientation worse than the one before it. His ears popped three times with the change of elevation, intensifying the ringing that had just about died away, and the irrational idea that he was going to topple backwards at any second wouldn't leave him alone. At some point, Uhura's arm ended up around his waist again and by the time they mounted the last stair, she was practically carrying him.

"Come here," she said, leading him away from the stairs while he panted in a most uncaptain-like way. "Rest here a minute. I'll go ahead and see if there's a place for you to rest."

She left him leaning against the wall and trotted along the passage, disappearing around the bend. Jim turned his face away from the dark abyss of the stairwell, and inhaled long and deep to catch his breath, once again fighting the urge to lie down and never get up. He was nearly ready to find a nice bit of hard rock floor to curl up on when Uhura reappeared, the echo of her footfalls announcing her approach.

"Okay, I found something."

Another short walk , and Jim was crawling into an actual bed. Well, it was more of a pallet, but it was raised off the floor and it was comfortable and still. Uhura hissed at him about putting his dirty boots on a traditional Elagabalan bed covering, and he wanted to point out that he was filthy and that taking off his boots wasn't going to get it any less dirty. But he was in pain and he was tired and he just didn't have it in him to be amused that Uhura was already voluntarily unzipping his boots, let alone argue with her about it.

"I'm going to go up to the next exit," she said, tossing one boot then the other on the floor. "I'll set my chronometer to alert me in an hour, so I can come back and wake you up."

"No, don't worry about me." His voice was slurring, and now that he was still again, he felt like that dark, quiet place was drowning him, snatching him down like an undertow in a violent ocean. Even the pounding of his headache seemed to be coming from far away, a distant annoyance that could be ignored if he could just get some sleep. "You just get to the exit and contact the ship."

"Like I said, write me up for insubordination if you've got a problem with it."

"You're bad at following orders," he mumbled, his eyes drifting closed without his permission

"I am not." He heard the soft rustle of her clothes, the click of her heels as she moved towards the door. "I just refuse to indulge your reckless behavior like Spock and McCoy. I'll be back."

The last thing he heard before he finally let that dark, quiet place take him was the sound of Uhura's footsteps retreating into the distance.

***

Jim was being shaken.

He slapped away the offending hand and turned his face away from the light, mumbling something that he intended to be 'go away.'

"Oh, good," said the owner of the hand with a great deal of relief. "You're still alive."

Weird. Whoever it was sounded just like Uhura.

Jim pried his eyes open, squinting against the light. It was Uhura looming over him, which was odd because she was in his room, and he had been informed often enough that under no circumstances, ever, even if he was the last male in the galaxy, would she be stepping into his quarters.

He stared at her in confusion. "What are you doing in my quarters?"

She eyed him with concern. "Captain, we aren't in your quarters. We're on Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Remember?"

Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Right.

"Sorry." He ran a hand over his face. "Did you find the exit?"

Uhura sat next to him on the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankle. "Yes, but I couldn't get in contact with the _Enterprise_ or the shuttle. And--"

A hesitation, so there was some bad news here. "And what?"

"I could see the city from where I was. It doesn't look good."

"Bad earthquake?"

"That's an understatement. Half the city is leveled, and there are fires everywhere."

Jim tried not to think about the probability of Bones, Sulu, and Ensign Unpronounceable Name trapped under rubble while fires raged through the city. "Do you think we can get down there?"

"I don't think you could get to the exit. It's all stairs and a steep incline, plus most of the renovations are going on up there. I had to climb over a few scaffolds just to get through. Not to mention the damage from the earthquake." Uhura bent to the side and fiddled with something on the floor. "It was also overcast, so I thought I might go up again in a few hours and see if it has cleared by then. If not, then I thought about trying for the last exit."

If there was a better plan, Jim was in no condition to think of it. "Okay. That's as good a plan as any."

"Thirsty?"

Jim swallowed against a cotton dry mouth and nodded.

Uhura helped him sit up and let him fight his way through the pain and vertigo before she pressed a plastic up into his hand, tall and narrow and filled with delicious, sweet water. He tried a few experimental sips just to make sure he wasn't going to vomit all over her, which he didn't, then had to force himself not to down the rest like a shot.

When he was done, Uhura plucked the empty cup from his hand with brisk efficiency, and Jim slumped back on the bed, noticing for the first time that there was a lot more light in the room. It seemed to be coming from a fat cylinder standing on its base next to the bed, and it took his brain longer than it should have to supply the word for it. "That's a flashlight."

Uhura seemed amused. "Yes."

"Where did you get it?"

"They set up some kind of lounge for the renovators in one of the rooms further up. There wasn't much there that was useful for us, but I did find the flashlight and a stack of disposable cups."

"Disposable cups and flashlights. Thank god for Hodgkin's Law, huh?" Jim rubbed his eyes again and fantasized about going back to sleep. "What time is it?"

"About 2100 hours." Uhura unclipped the communicator from her belt and flicked it open. "Well, closer to 2200, actually."

"We've been in here now, what, almost three hours?"

She closed the communicator with a flick of her wrist. "About that."

"So it took us close to two hours to walk two miles."

"More like two and a half miles, but yes."

"You look exhausted."

Uhura smirked. "But I still look better than you."

"Always." Jim curled onto his side. "Set the chronometer for another hour and get some sleep."

"Yes, sir," she said with only the barest hint of sarcasm, then surprised the hell out Jim when she grabbed the flashlight off the floor, circled to the other side of the bed, and started removing her boots.

She seemed to be getting in bed with him. That was unexpected.

"You know, I'm not the last male in the galaxy, right?" Jim asked just to make sure.

"I know." Uhura settled on her side with her back to him, set her communicator next to her head, and thumbed off the flashlight. They were plunged into darkness, deep and impenetrable. "But I'm not going to spend the night running from one residence to the other to wake you up every hour."

"Fair enough," Jim yawned and let his eyes slide close, satisfied that she hadn't hit her head as well. "Carry on."

He was very nearly asleep again when Uhura said, "Kirk?"

Jim grunted in response, annoyed to be tugged away from that dark, quiet place.

"If you go around telling people we slept together, they won't be able to find the body."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"I'm serious."

"Understood."

"And for god's sake," he heard her say just as he was slipping over the precipice into sleep. "Don't die in the night. I don't want to get stuck filling out all that paperwork."

It was nice to know she cared.


	5. Chapter 5

"So help me, Jim Kirk, if you do not get your hands off of me right now, I will push you down those stairs and tell everyone you fell."

Jim opened his eyes.

The flashlight was on, he was clinging to a warm body, arm around the waist, face nuzzled into the crook of the neck. They smelled sort of nice, like vanilla, but also like dust and sweat, though not in a bad way, and right on the heels of that thought came the realization that the body and waist and neck belonged to Uhura.

He jerked away from her quickly, his whole body protesting the sudden shift from stillness to motion, his shoulder and head the loudest. She sat up and glared at him, smoothing the stray tendrils of hair back from her face and fussing with her disordered pony tail.

He drew back anxiously. "Sorry, I, uh, cuddle."

Uhura glared at the wet spot on her shoulder. "And drool."

"Yeah." Jim wiped his mouth sheepishly. "Sorry."

Another baleful look, and she swung her legs off the bed, putting her back to him. Jim sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his eyes, yearned briefly but deeply for his toothbrush. He felt better. His head still pounded, and his shoulder had a bone deep ache, but his head was clear and the urge to close his eyes and never open them again was gone. So, not great and definitely nowhere near one hundred percent, but better. He wondered if he could make it to the next exit, now. Maybe, but the question was would Uhura let him?

Jim grabbed Uhura's communicator and flipped it open. The chronometer read 0723. Wow. They'd slept all night. That would explain why it had felt so long, filled as it was with Uhura poking him in the side, shining that damned flashlight in his face and demanding that he wake up, that he not die, that he tell her the year or his rank and current assignment, that he remember her promise of pursuing him through the afterlife if he died and McCoy killed her.

"What time is it?" Uhura swung her legs up on the bed again, her hair more or less in place, apparently satisfied with putting herself back together. Her make-up was smeared around her eyes, and the slight dishevelment was kind of attractive, made her look a little more vulnerable, less unattainable.

Jim flipped the communicator closed and tossed it down on the bed between them. "0723. Well, 0724 now."

"We slept all night, then," she said, mostly to herself, then held up a narrow silver package. "Hungry?"

"Is that a rations bar?"

Uhura nodded, breaking the seal and peeling open the silver wrapping, the crackle of the packaging very loud in the deep silence of the room.

"Where did you get it?"

"I brought it with me."

Jim eyed her tight skirt and dress jacket. There was no way she could have had any rations stowed in her uniform. "Where did you keep it?"

"In my boot." She snapped the narrow bar in two and offered half to him.

He took it from her absently, distracted by how weird that was. "You came to a diplomatic function with a rations bar stuffed in your boot?"

She shrugged as she broke off the corner of her half. "I like to be prepared."

"With protein rations?"

She shot him a dark look. "Are you going to laugh at me, or are you going to appreciate the fact that we have something to eat?"

Great, he was pushing the all the wrong buttons again. "Sorry. No. I think it's fantastic. Honestly. Insane, but fantastic."

She rolled her eyes. "Just eat it," she said, and popped the piece into her mouth.

Jim consigned himself to his fate and took a bite of the rations bar. He grimaced at the taste; Scotty had been entirely justified in his outrage at having to survive for six months on Delta Vega on protein rations alone. They were disgusting – dry, tasteless, with the consistency of tree bark, but not nearly so delicious. But they were packed full of protein, vitamins, minerals, and other nutritionally sound things that could allow you to live for six months on a frozen planet, but they were as far from being a substitute for real food as seeing a picture of the black of space was from standing on the bridge of a starship and seeing it for yourself.

They gnawed on the rations in silence. Jim trudged through it like one of those dull required courses at the Academy, just hoping to get through it with his sanity still intact, while Uhura broke off little pieces and popped them into her mouth, staring off into the distance as she chewed. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, noting how precisely she ate, small pieces, small bites, very deliberate and conscientious. It was neat and orderly, almost pathologically so, and weird in a way he couldn't quite place.

"So, can I ask you a question?" she eventually asked, tucking half of her portion back into the wrapping.

Jim pried a glob of protein from the crevices of his molars with his tongue. "Sure. It's your turn anyway."

"What do you –" Uhura paused, frowned, then shook her head. "I can't even believe I'm asking you this question. Nevermind."

"Come on." He nudged her playfully with his elbow. "Out with it. You've got my attention now."

"Okay." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as if she was facing a board of inquiry. "What do you and Spock do when you disappear together?"

The question surprised him at first, then amused him, and Jim only just managed to bite back a laugh. "You're jealous."

Her expression darkened. "I am not."

Jim raised an eyebrow at her; she sighed in defeat, her shoulders slumping. "Yes. Fine. I'm jealous. It's stupid, I know, but I can't seem to help it." She leaned back against the wall and stared down at what was left of her half of the rations bar, her thumb smoothing the wrapper flat. "I was never going to be that girl."

"Which girl?"

"The girl who gets upset when her boyfriend spends time with people other than her." She shook her head. "Look, I'm sorry. It was a stupid question. You don't have to answer it. You're friends. I'm glad you're friends. I really am. Spock hasn't had many friends in his life, and he's your first officer, and you should be friends."

Jim leaned back, and crossed his legs at the ankles, mirroring her position. "You know, I wouldn't go so far as to say we're friends. We get along passably well when it comes to running the ship, but we always argue, and I think half the time he fantasizes about pulling that nerve pinch on me and mutinying."

"He doesn't, actually. You drive him crazy with your unorthodox methods and you might want to consider not touching him quite as often, but he seems to have a great deal of faith in you and your insanity."

"Oh." Jim popped the last bit of his rations into his mouth and chewed, mostly so he didn't have to speak right away. He didn't know what to make of that, really, the idea of Spock having a great deal of faith in him. It had only been about a month since they left Space Dock, and he and Spock were still trying to figure one another out, trying to make their alliance forged in crisis into something like the friendship the Ambassador had insisted they would have. Jim had a hard time judging their progress; to say that on average they argued at least 3 times a day was not an exaggeration, and he was pretty sure that the gleam he sometimes saw in Spock's eyes was the urge to bend him over the navigator's console and strangle him within an inch of his life again.

Maybe whatever they were doing was working, if what Uhura said was true.

"It's nothing exciting, really," he said after he pried the rations off the roof of his mouth. "We play chess, mostly. And argue, of course. Usually about stupid stuff like regulations, and whether I should let the engineers complete the still they think we don't know about, or whether the _Kobayashi Maru_ is fair or not. Sometimes I ask him how things are going with the Vulcan colony, and sometimes he tells me he is concerned about the progress. I think that really means he's still having a hard time dealing with what happened to Vulcan."

She nodded. "It does."

They fell silent, the ghosts of all those lost to the Narada's advanced weaponry and the the black hole twisting around them. The whole crew had lost friends and colleagues at Vulcan, but they were all acutely aware of how much more Spock had lost, his mother, his extended family, his planet.

Finally, Jim broke the silence. "So have you asked Spock what we do?"

"No. I almost did once or twice, but I always backed down. I wasn't up to feeling like an idiot when he was done enumerating the reasons why my jealousy was illogical."

"Well, he would be right. I mean, what do you think I'm trying to do, seduce him?"

It was just a joke, but Uhura stiffened and quickly looked away, the rations wrapping crinkling loudly as her hand clenched around it.

Jim stared. "Holy shit! That is what you think!"

"No." Uhura shook her head emphatically. "That's ridiculous."

"You're damn right it's ridiculous! What kind of asshole do you think I am?" He threw up a hand to forestall any possible answer she might give. "No. Never mind. Don't answer that. I already have a good idea."

There was a heavy silence. Jim desperately desired to storm off and get away from her for a few minutes to calm down, but despite how much better he felt, he was pretty sure he'd only manage to fall ass over teakettle. But after a moment, she was the one who moved, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed to pull on her boots.

"I'm going to go get some more water," she said as she stood. "I'll be back.

Jim might have let her go had she done the cornered cat thing, bristling with anger and claws out, wielding her sarcasm like a weapon. But she didn't. Instead, she circled the bed to collect the empty cup she had given him last night and headed for the door with her head held high and her shoulders squared. He was ready to see her go, ready to sit here for a few minutes and indulge his anger, but something about the way she was moving, so stiff and controlled, cut straight through his anger and went for his compassion, forced him to see that she was trying to retreat with her dignity intact. This was Uhura, defeated, and he was so startled to realize it that his anger bled right out of him, gone as quickly as it had come.

"Lieutenant," he said in his Captain's voice, just to make sure she would stop.

She did, turning with one hand on her hip, the other crumpling the disposable cup. Tears were shimmering in her eyes, and she was just barely keeping herself in check. "What is it, _sir_?"

He clearly heard the unspoken go to hell behind her words.

"Where is this coming from?"

She tensed, swallowed, her eyes never leaving his. "Nowhere. I'm just being unreasonable. Don't worry about it."

"Bullshit. What's wrong? Why the hell do you think I'd try to steal Spock from you when you're the one I've been after for years?"

She hesitated, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, like she couldn't decide whether to tell him to fuck off or cry on his shoulder. "I spoke to him."

"Who?"

"The other Spock."

Oh. _Oh._ He knew how mind altering that could be, and it couldn't have been good, if this was her reaction. What exactly had he said to her if she came out of it thinking he was trying to seduce Spock?

"Come sit down." Jim patted the bed next to him. "Tell me what he said."

After a moment, she relented and came back to the bed to perch uneasily on the edge, the cup still clutched in her hand. She was silent, staring off into the distance, so he urged her to speak with a quiet, "Uhura?"

"It was when we made that first stop at New Vulcan with supplies." The words came tumbling out, like she had been holding them in forever, just waiting for a chance to bleed the wound. "At first I was thrown off, because it was really him. The same man, but from some other reality. It was just so… surreal."

Jim nodded. "Yeah. Surreal. Good word for it."

"I could tell by the way he looked at me that he knew me, but he wasn't looking at me in the right way. He was warm and friendly, but that was it, nothing at all like the way our Spock looks at me."

Yeah, he'd noticed that look. Intense, like she was the center of the universe and he'd rend limb from limb the first bastard who dared to hurt her.

"Then when Spock introduced me as his, well, the words he used translated to something like 'probable life mate', and Spock, the other Spock-" She paused, seemed to struggle with how to discuss two of the same man.

"I think of him as the Ambassador. It makes things a little easier."

"Okay. The Ambassador raised an eyebrow, you know, the way he does when he's surprised, and said, 'Fascinating. I did not meet the Nyota Uhura I knew until we served together on the _Enterprise_.' But I speak Spock fluently, and do you know what I heard? 'I am completely surprised by this, as I was never involved with you at all and never even considered it.'"

He could see it, the two Spocks and Nyota on that hot, dry planet the Ambassador had found, his Spock and Uhura standing close together as they often did, the Ambassador, that other Spock from another time line and another future, staring at the two of them and realizing that things were not progressing as he had expected. He could easily see the eyebrow lift, hear those polite, factual words and the unspoken sentiment behind them, and now it was all starting to make sense - Uhura's insecurity, her suspicions - though he still wasn't very clear on why she seemed to think he was out to seduce Spock. He knew he had a reputation, but seriously, _Spock_?

"I think Spock was taken aback by it, too. I mean, he's always been clear about his intentions with our relationship, and it isn't casual, not for me and not for him. But I think we were both shaken by the idea that in the other time line, we served on the _Enterprise_ together, but only as colleagues and nothing more. And actually, it scares me a little."

"Is that it?" Jim still wasn't getting the full picture here.

She shook her head and pursed her lips, her eyes darting away anxiously. "According to Spock, our Spock, the Ambassador has this idea of some epic friendship between you two. And you know what? I'm a linguist. I'm trained to read between the lines. I know what kind of friendship he means."

For the first time in a very long time, Jim blushed, his hand to God, _blushed_, when he realized what she meant. His mind raced back to the mind meld on Delta Vega, to those fleeting images that had bled in around Spock's memories of Romulus and the supernova and the red matter, he and Spock and Bones and Uhura, all different, but the same in a way he couldn't quite express, something in the nature of their relationships, their interactions. But he hadn't examined those things in detail at the time, what with the end of the world literally being nigh, but he didn't have the sense that the other Jim had had that kind of relationship with Spock.

Still, he had to admit, much to his embarrassment and not a little horror, he had seen nothing that might have invalidated her interpretation, either.

"I don't think he meant it that way at all." That sounded weak, even to his own ears.

"Yeah, well, I know what I see."

Jim couldn't breathe. "What does that mean?"

"You two are fascinated with each other. There's this pull between you, like two planets caught in the draw of the other's gravity, and eventually your orbits are going to cross."

"Sounds like you've been reading Vulcan poetry again." Now his tone was sharp and bitter, resenting the idea that he wasn't in control of himself or his destiny or of who he was going to love just because _Spock_ of all people said so. "When will long, technical descriptions of hot desert winds come in?"

"Everyone can see it, Kirk, even if you two can't."

She was serious. She was completely and totally and utterly serious.

He was aghast. "I wouldn't do that to you."

"You act as if you have some kind of control over this. Even you can't control destiny, Kirk."

Suddenly, Jim was pissed. Furious beyond the telling. "Don't tell me you believe in that destiny bullshit. Did you miss the part where all of our destinies changed when Nero came through that black hole?"

She arched an eyebrow in that way she had, the way that silently questioned his intelligence and good sense and his ability to function among civilized people. "Did they? We all served together on the _Enterprise_ in that other reality, and we're all serving here together now. Spock seems to think that all of us coming together like this is the time line's way mending itself and setting everyone on the proper path."

There was a moment when he thought he might end up speechless with rage, but words started coming out of his mouth, and he didn't try to stop them, didn't even pretend that he wanted to. "So? That doesn't mean everything will happen the same way. In fact, it can't possibly happen the same way, not with an entire planet gone, most of the Vulcan population, and half of the Starfleet cadets. And you know what else? Maybe I want a different destiny. Maybe in that other time line all of our relationships are different, maybe you weren't with Spock and I was, but my dad was also alive and Vulcan was never destroyed and hell, who knows what else was different or how those things impacted those other versions of us."

He paused, still fuming, still just absurdly furious. Uhura was staring at him, a little taken aback by his intensity, but apparently unaffected by his logic, and that just made it worse and added fuel to the fire. How dare she just… acquiesce?

"For fuck's sake, Uhura," he said, the words flowing again, completely unfiltered. "Don't write off what you have with Spock because some other Spock from another time line with a whole different set of variables has the idea that our Spock is with the wrong person. You know how much of a smug asshole he can be when he thinks he's right, whether he's from the future or not. Besides, in this time line, I like the two of you together, so don't think I'm going to come between you, not unless you ask me to."

That heavy silence again. He hadn't meant to say all that, he certainly hadn't meant to throw out that last bit, but damn it, he refused to believe that he didn't have any control over his own life, whether he seemed to be getting everything he ever wanted out of destiny or not. And he certainly didn't like seeing her consigning to what she perceived as her fate, not when he'd come to know her as such a fighter, as someone who worked for what she wanted and took it when it came to her.

Uhura stared at him a moment with an unreadable expression, then stood and straightened her skirt. "I'm going to go get some water. I'll be back."

Jim didn't think he could say anything without going off on another rant, so he watched her go in silence, and looked at her legs as she went out of spite.

In the doorway she paused, and without turning around said, "You can't fight destiny, Kirk."

Then she was gone, her footsteps dwindling into the distance.

"Yeah?" he said into the empty room. "Watch me."


	6. Chapter 6

Jim was still fuming ten minutes later when the mountain shook around him.

It only lasted a moment, an abrupt burst of noise, followed by a deep rumble that rolled through the bedrock, rattling the few pieces of furniture in the room, the flashlight set on its end by the bed, and Jim. A sudden stillness and silence followed, as if it had never happened.

Jim sat there a moment, digging his fingers hard into the bedding and blinking in surprise, waiting to see if something worse would follow. Then he remembered Uhura, gone for water, probably traversing the cavern to do it, because the closest source of water was probably the restrooms at the blocked entrance, and all of those elaborately carved stalactites would have been hanging over her head…

He was up and shoving his feet into his boots as soon as he thought it, despite the swimming vision and the dull throb of his head that came with the sudden change in elevation. He was out of the residence at a run, even though the world seemed to be tilting to the right at a dangerous angle. He jogged along the corridor, back around the bend, worry for Uhura dulling the myriad protests of his body, but as soon as he came to the top of that menacing fucking stairwell and looked down its long descent, the vertigo was back, pitching the stairwell back and forth in his vision.

Jim squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep himself centered, tried to push back that feeling of being in free fall even though his his feet were firmly planted on the ground. Uhura might be bleeding out down there in the cavern, under a pile of rubble, and he couldn't get to her because he felt like he was going to go down the stairs head first-

Footsteps coming at him at a run echoed up towards him.

Jim opened his eyes. To his great relief, it was Uhura, coming into view and barreling up the stairs two at a time, hair flying behind her. As soon as she saw him, she started making shooing motions at him.

"Go back! Go back!"

"What is it?"

"Looters," she said with the same disgust that most people said rapist or pedophile. She grabbed him by the arm as she passed and tried to pull him along with her, but he twisted his arm out of her grasp and stood his ground.

"Looters?" What could looters possibly want with this museum? As far as he could tell there was nothing that stood out as objects of interest, unless traditional Elagabalan bedding and brightly colored weavings were your thing.

She stopped when she realized he wasn't following. "Looters with _phaser rifles_, Kirk. They blew out the blocked entrance." She tugged at his arm again. "Come on."

"Ah, those kinds of looters." He didn't move, just peered thoughtfully down the menacing slope of the stairwell. "Did you see them?"

With a sigh, she dropped his arm. "Just one. He didn't see me, but the lights haven't gone off yet, and I dropped the water when the wall blew. It was in the bathroom, at least, so unless they go in there…"

Voices drifted up from the cavern just then, bouncing around the meeting hall and wafting up the stairwell. The looters were speaking in Elagabalan, shouting back and forth without any concern for being detected, and Jim briefly considered taking Uhura and finding a hiding place deeper in the caverns. But their voices weren't moving in their direction, and he figured that they were safe where they were for the moment.

"What are they saying?" he asked, dropping his voice to a whisper.

Uhura tilted her head and listened as she did at her station, eyes distant. She even put her fingers to her ear as if she had the earpiece in. "They're talking about the fallen stalactites and… the Dagger." Her lip curled in disgust. "They're after the Dagger."

"How do they plan to get it down?"

She listened a moment more. "Explosives," she said, then followed it with a string of Klingon that he was fairly certain was profane and unladylike. "That could bring down the whole cave system."

"And destroy the Dagger – wait, let me guess. They want it for the ore?"

"Sounds that way. It's supposed to be almost purely cavilite."

"And cavilite is very popular on the black market for its blocking properties." Jim thought it over a moment, trying to decide what to do. It went without saying that they had to do something. He just didn't know what they could do in their current circumstances, lacking resources, back up, and in Jim's situation, good health.

Next to him, Uhura signed in resignation. "We're going to try to stop them, aren't we?"

"Yeah. Come on. Let's go see what they're up to."

"You are utterly and completely out of your mind," she said, but followed anyway. That's what he liked about her; she always made her opinion known no matter what, usually with a sarcastic 'Captain' or a threatening 'Kirk', but she always came along for the ride.

He was starting to think the lady did protest too much.

They crept down the stairs, Jim holding Uhura's arm in a death grip as he let her lead him, ignoring the vertigo as best he could until they came to the bottom. He took the lead then, his sense of balance happy not to deal with anymore nasty inclines, and slipped into the forest of stalagmites, ducking low and keeping to the shadows until he found a place with adequate cover and a good view of the looters.

He and Uhura crouched down behind a stalagmite and watched them, three men with the nearly white hair and vaguely yellow skin of the Elagabalans moving around in the bowl of the amphitheater, hands on their hips as they craned their necks to examine the Dagger. They all had that dodgy smuggler look that seemed to apply no matter the humanoid species – unshaven, unkept, wearing drab colored clothes and the knee-high, fire resistant boots of those who spent their time doing manual labor and dealing with the machinery of older space-faring freighters. One was a huge brute whom Jim thought he might like to avoid fisticuffs with in his condition, but the other two were shorter and slighter and worried him a bit less. But only a bit. He and Uhura were still outnumbered and outgunned.

Jim watched them for a few minutes, waiting to see if they gave any indication of more accomplices, but they seemed wholly involved in their conversation, pointing and circling the dais. The big one jogged up a few steps to get a better look at what they were discussing, the clunk and jingle of the tools and devices on his belt echoing into the cave.

Jim grinned when he recognized one of the devices. "Do you see what the big one has on his belt?"

Uhura studied him a moment. "A laser beacon."

"We need that." It wouldn't be affected by the cavilite's blocking properties and would cut right through the atmosphere to the _Enterprise_.

"Yeah, but how are we going to get it?"

Jim considered it a moment. He wasn't in any condition to go picking fights, and although Uhura had self-defense training, she had no hand to hand combat, not the kind she needed to stand up against three experienced smugglers.

He glanced at her. On the other hand, even filthy and exhausted with that nasty cut scabbed over on her forehead, she was as hot as ever, very pleasing to look at.

A plan began to form in his mind.

"Can you cry on cue?"

She looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Look, don't get mad, but I'm just stating facts here. You're hot, and not just by human standards."

"Kirk--" There was the threatening version of his name, but he forged on anyway.

"No, hear me out. Go out there and play up the damsel in distress card. Distract them, and I'll do the rest."

"Just because I'm a woman-"

"They'll go stupid. Trust me. Men of any species are stupid when it comes to women. Because you're pretty, they'll assume you can't hurt them, especially if you're all girly and needy, and they'll let down their guard."

"Either that or they'll rape me or kill me on the spot or take me hostage and hold me for ransom. Kirk, this isn't one of those stupid action holo-vids, and I'm not some idiot girl who is too stupid to live."

"Look, I know you're not a damsel in distress. You know you're not a damsel in distress, and God help me, I know you'll hurt me if I ever thought of you that way, but we're working on limited resources here, and we need that laser beacon."

She huffed angrily, glanced down at the smugglers, then back at Jim. She was not pleased, but he knew that she going to agree, and he wouldn't even need to make it an order to get her to do it. "Fine. But I hate you so much right now."

"Noted."

Uhura ducked low and threaded through the stalagmites towards the path. Jim lost sight of her for a few minutes, until she emerged near the amphitheater, moving cautiously. Shouting filled the cavern as soon as the looters saw her; their outdated but still dangerous rifle phasers came up, and she immediately threw up her hands in surrender. Jim tensed and his heart beat tripled in speed – Spock would kill him if he didn't bring Uhura back alive – but there was no immediate rifle fire, no immediate threat to her life.

She didn't start crying or anything – not that he had honestly expected her to – but he was pretty sure her terrified expression was no act. She began speaking very quickly in Elagabalan, sounding frightened and sincere. After a moment, the tension among the smugglers eased as they realized she was just some lost human female who happened to have survived the earthquake and was no threat to them.

One of them motioned her towards the amphitheater with the point of his weapon, snapping out an order. Uhura did as he said, smiling nervously and slowly moving forward, hands up. At the top, the Elagabalan holding her at gunpoint snapped something at her, and she stopped. The big one hurried over to her and began patting her down; Jim tensed, now worried about that whole raping the damsel in distress scenario she had brought up, but he was professional and quick about it and did nothing untoward. Jim relaxed as soon as he moved away, even though one of the looters still had his phaser aimed at her.

He motioned with the weapon again, and she descended into the amphitheater where another order was snapped at her. She sat on the edge of the dais, back ramrod straight, and her hands clutching the edge of the platform. The phaser was lowered, though not put away, and the smugglers went back to what they had been doing, circling the amphitheater and discussing the Dagger.

Phase one down. Jim waited for the next step, watching them as they circled and pointed and discussed, while Uhura stayed right where they put her, never relaxing, but apparently listening closely to their conversation, occasionally glancing up when they pointed and argued.

Eventually they seemed to come to some sort of an agreement, or at the very least, the conversation stopped. Two of them started climbing out of the amphitheater, while the one with the phaser in his hands remained with Uhura, standing a few steps above her, weapon cradled in his arms.

Two were going out for supplies, leaving the third to guard the prisoner. Perfect. Time for phase two.

Jim pivoted on the balls of his feet and began threading through the stalagmites, keeping low and stepping cautiously over the occasional pile of fallen stalactites until he was in a position behind the guard's back. He crept forward, weaving between the columns and stalagmites until he knew Uhura would be able to see him among the rocks.

She caught sight of him almost immediately, her eyes flashing with surprise then darting away quickly before she drew notice to him, and turned her focus to the guard. She flashed a flirtatious smile at him, crossed her legs in a very interesting way, and leaned forward with a playful tilt of her head. Though body language wasn't consistent through all humanoid species, her guard seemed to read her movements the right way, because he grinned and took a step towards her, asking her a question, probably some smuggler equivalent to _what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this_? Whatever her reply was, it drew the guard closer to her; he took another step down, his attention even more focused on her.

Excellent. They left the stupid one to watch her.

Jim slipped into the open, thinking that right now would have been an excellent time to have that heavy flashlight he'd left behind in the residence as a bludgeon. But he reminded himself that beggars couldn't be choosers as he descended the steps towards the guard, his whole body thrumming with tension, his heart pounding and the rush of adrenaline the only thing making the throbbing of his head bearable. At least the guard was too busy chatting Uhura up like they were at a bar to hear the scrape of Jim's boots on the rock, or even his heavy breathing, labored from his overexertion, and he was more than happy to take a stupid, oblivious guard as the consolation prize.

His luck held, letting him get right up behind the smuggler, close enough that when he wrapped his good arm around his neck and pressed on his windpipe, the smuggler choked out a strangled shout of surprise and let the rifle slip from his grip. His hands flew up to scrabble at Jim's arm, while the weapon went clattering across the floor, sliding right up to and stopping at the toes of Uhura's boots. She was up in a flash, snatching the phaser off the ground and swinging it around, aiming and charging it all in one motion; Jim made a mental note not to worry about her when she on away missions if she was that good with a phaser.

Under him the guard stopped struggling and went limp.

"Tell him I'm going to let him go," Jim said, tightening his arm around the smuggler's neck, just barely fighting off another wave of vertigo, "and he should stay where he is with his hands up."

Uhura repeated the order in Elagabalan, looking pretty bad ass with the phaser in her hands. The smuggler nodded; Jim cautiously let him go, and their new prisoner did as he was told, standing stock still with his hands in the air. Jim stepped back, considered all of his limited options, and at last took the length of cable from the smuggler's belt and tied his hands and feet so that there would be no escape, not unless he tried hopping for it.

With one hand on his shoulder, Jim sat him on the step then went down to Uhura. "Let me have the phaser."

Uhura looked relieved to hand it over. "What now?"

Jim leveled the phaser at their prisoner, who was glaring at them furiously. "We move onto phase three."

"There are phases to this plan?"

"Of course." Jim briefly looked over the phaser rifle, getting acquainted with the antiquated design – the thing had to be as old as he was – and made sure it was set to stun. "Just because I made it up on the spot doesn't mean that there aren't logical steps."

Uhura just rolled her eyes. "Right. Of course. And what does phase three involve?"

"You'll stay here with our new friend and keep an ear out for me. I'll take care of the other two."

He turned to go, but Uhura caught him by the arm. "You're not looking so hot again, Kirk."

He gave her a reassuring smile, one that insisted he was right as rain; he knew she wouldn't buy it, but they didn't have many other choices right now. "I'm fine. Promise."

She studied him for a moment, back to being all concerned and tender towards him, and nodded. "If you say so," she said, and let him go.

Jim gave her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and climbed out of the amphitheater on adrenaline and pure will power alone. He took up position at the mouth of the cavern and waited, listening for the approach of the other smugglers, who were, to Jim's irritation, taking their sweet time. The adrenaline was starting to fade; the throb of his head was becoming sharper, more insistent, and the damage to his shoulder was making itself known again with an ache that seemed to have soaked deep into his bones and joints. By the time he finally heard the approach of their footsteps and their alien chattering, he was back to wanting to curl up on the floor and go to sleep.

Whatever healing had happened while he slept was slowly being reversed by all of this running around, and even though he was going to have to sit through another rant about his recklessness and lack of self-preservation from his CMO (he hoped), there was too much at stake right now to give into some stupid concussion and his damaged body.

Jim took a fortifying breath and put his back against the wall, phaser held at ready. He waited until the echo of footsteps and the voices of the smugglers were upon him, just around the corner, then jumped out in front of them, rifle aimed.

His vision swam and his whole body protested with one massive jolt of pain, but it was worth it when the smugglers came to an abrupt stop, startled to see another human in a dress uniform pop out in front of them with a phaser rifle in hand. The container they were carrying between them hit the ground with a resounding thunk, and their hands went into the in the air like it was something they had a lot of practice at. The surprise on the smaller one's face was nearly comical, but the big one got over his shock pretty quickly. His eyes narrowed and his hand twitched, like he wanted to make a grab at the weapon slung over his shoulder.

"Don't," Jim said, the phaser in his hands humming threateningly. The smuggler didn't go for the phaser, so he must have understood him well enough. "Lieutenant!"

Uhura came running out of the amphitheater and took her place at his side, alert and ready for his orders. "Sir?"

"Tell them that you are going to relieve them of their belts and weapons, and that they should stay still and keep their hands up."

"Yes, sir." She repeated the order in Elagabalan and both men nodded like good little prisoners.

Jim felt the tension in his body ease infinitesimally.

The belts fell at their feet with a clatter as Uhura moved around them, undoing buckles and unhooking rifle straps, and even checking their pockets and emptying them of their contents. The smaller one looked disgusted with the whole process, but the big one's eyes were on Jim, gleaming with a malevolent purpose, like he wanted nothing more than to get his meaty hands around Jim's throat. Nothing unusual there; people always wanted to choke the life out of him, his first officer included, but he and the antiquated phaser rifle in his hands were going to make sure that wasn't going to happen.

"I think we're good," Uhura said, circling the men one last time to make sure she hadn't missed anything.

"All right. Take the laser beacon and get a message to the _Enterprise_."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I think I have everything under control, here."

"Yes, sir," she said, snatched up the laser beacon, and headed towards the blown entrance at a run.

Jim motioned his two new prisoners towards the amphitheater with his rifle, and it was only after he had all three of them sitting in a row above him while he stood beside the dais with the phaser resting in his arms that he realized he should have had Uhura tie them up like he had their friend. He felt fairly sure they were more interested in self-preservation than making any stupid moves with a charged phaser so close at hand, but it was a hole in his plan, one he planned to blame on the steady, distracting throb of his concussion, and he couldn't decide if that annoyed him more than it worried him.

No, he decided a moment later when big one said something with a grin and one of his friends answered, it worried him more, especially when the third chimed in with an additional comment, and the other two nodded in agreement. He had the distinct impression they were discussing how to ambush him and that was a thought that most certainly did not please him. He aimed the rifle at the big one and gave him a threatening smile, making it clear with body language and the nose of the phaser alone that it was time to stop talking. And he did, though he watched Jim with that gleam in his eye that promised a great deal of grievous bodily harm if the chance ever came.

Tense silence fell, and Jim didn't dare to let himself relax, just watched the prisoners and grew more and more anxious the longer Uhura was gone. Eventually anxiety became full out worry, for Uhura and himself, because something was wrong, he could feel it. And sure enough, right on the heels of that thought, the eyes of all three smugglers flew up to the edge of the amphitheater behind him. The big one rolled out a Christmas had come early kind of smile, and Jim didn't even need to turn around to know that everything had just gone pear-shaped.

"Captain!"

He whirled around at the sound of Uhura's voice, strained and frightened, to find her standing at the edge of the amphitheater, a phaser at her head.

Great. There was a fourth looter, and he did not look happy.

He was Elagabalan like the others, but he didn't appear to be a smuggler; he was dressed in casual Elagabalan street clothes, dusty and rumpled though they were, and he was clean shaven and more or less well kempt. He had Uhura by the arm, and the phaser at her temple hummed at the frequency that meant it was set to kill.

Jim already knew how this was going to go. On another day, when he wasn't suffering from a concussion and dealing with a healing shoulder, he might have put up a fight. But this fourth looter meant business, and the nose of that phaser was too close to Uhura's temple for his liking.

Uhura met his eyes, and though she was afraid, he could see that she was waiting on his decision, waiting to see what he would do so she could follow. Loyal, even when she suspected him of trying to seduce her boyfriend. It made no sense, and neither did the loyalty of the rest of the crew for that matter, but he knew that if he didn't give up now, he'd never have the chance to see if it ever would.

Behind him, he heard the susurration of cloth and the clop of boots on the ground, and knew the others had started moving, most likely towards him.

The looter said something, and Uhura translated. "He says to put down the weapon, or he'll kill me."

Jim turned to see the big one looming over him, ready to bring that promise of grievous bodily harm to fruition. With a sigh, he uncharged the rifle and handed it over; the big one accepted it with no small amount of glee and handed it off to one of his friends.

"Go ahead," Jim said, resigned, and the last thing he saw before the world went black was a big, meaty fist flying at his face.

******

Jim opened his eyes.

"Oh good, you're awake."

Uhura was looking down at him, an expression of relief and concern on her face. His head was pillowed in her lap while her hand carded absently through his hair, and beyond her, above her head, he could see the Dagger of Cobol, its point even more lethal looking from below.

Uhura smoothed his hair back from his forehead; it was nice. "How do you feel?"

"Like crap." It came out a misshapen mumble, because now in addition to his throbbing concussion and wounded shoulder, he had a sore jaw where a fist had met his face.

Uhura nodded, all concerned and tender, and he couldn't help but to enjoy her momentary affection a little, despite the circumstances. "I bet."

"I'll be all right, promise." That sounded a little better, less like he was talking through a mouth full of marbles.

"You'd better be."

On his right, there seemed to be a heated conversation happening. Jim rolled his head to the side to see the big smuggler and his more urbane accomplice arguing vehemently between themselves, shouting and gesturing and pointing in their direction. The other two were slinking around the periphery, doing things with explosives that Jim just didn't want to think about right now. He watched them silently, not understanding one single word, of course, not until the words "Starfleet" and "Kirk" and "Federation" came up, and the newly arrived looter turned his eyes on them with a soulless look of menace.

"They're going to kill us, aren't they?"

"The new one wants to, yes." Uhura's hand continued to smooth his hair back from his face; Jim wondered if she was even aware she was doing it. "The big one insists that would be stupid because of who we are."

"Is the new one their inside man?"

"Seems to be. As far as I can tell he works with the renovation crews as a supervisor or something."

The argument didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Jim hoped they kept it up long enough to give Spock time to get a rescue party together and get them out of this mess before the new one convinced the others that murder was the way to go. But since he couldn't understand a word of it, he turned his attention back to Uhura, always more interesting than indecisive smugglers.

"Sorry I got us caught."

She sighed in resignation. "It's all right. It would have worked if their friend hadn't showed up."

"Did you get a message to the _Enterprise_?"

"No," she said, but her lips curled in a rather sinister way, and Jim was very glad at that moment that Uhura was on his side.

He felt a wave of affection for her, a warm, protective feeling that spread through his chest. He suddenly very much wanted her to know that he would never do anything to hurt her, and what better time to make sure she understood that than when they were sitting under an alien god's Sword of Damocles, on the very brink of either rescue or death.

"You know," he said as solemnly as he could manage, looking her dead in the eye and willing her to believe him. "Everything I said to you was the absolute truth. I meant it, all of it, every last word."

She stared at him a moment, lips pursed, brow furrowed, then slowly turned her eyes upwards. Jim followed her line of sight to see the Dagger, hanging above him, as sharp and forbidding as ever. But it did nothing; it didn't fall and impale him where he lay, lightening didn't strike him where he stood, the ground didn't open and swallow him whole (again). It just hung there, an elaborately inscribed piece of cavilite, and did nothing more exciting than exist.

And that's when they heard the shouting. The other shouting, in Federation Standard.

Jim grinned at her, and at full wattage this time, even though his jaw screamed at him in indignation. "See?"

The looters looked up all at once, frozen until the big one pulled up the phaser rifle he had slung over his shoulder and aimed it towards the top of the amphitheater. That was when Spock came into view, phaser in hand, followed by Bones, three of the _Enterprise_'s security team, and a few of the Elagabalan militia.

Slowly the big one lowered his rifle, while the other looters raised their hands in surrender, and Jim finally let himself relax.

The next few minutes was a cacophonous blur of shouting and phaser pointing and people storming around, being official and authoritative. He and Uhura stayed where they were, even when Bones managed to get down to them and started in with the tricorder, grumbling about how much trouble Jim's inability to avoid bodily harm was. Spock drifted over once the looters were properly arrested, asking after Uhura's health then Jim's, his eyes flickering towards him with an inscrutable expression, well, with a more inscrutable expression than usual, anyway. Uhura looked down at Jim and raised an eyebrow as if saying, _see?_, and yeah, maybe he wasn't going to dismiss her fears as easily as he'd like.

Jim closed his eyes and let Spock take over while Bones jabbed him with a hypospray or four, not even minding it all that much this time. He was tired and he hurt and he was ready to not be trapped in a cave anymore, but most of all, he didn't want to think about what Uhura had said about him and Spock, about the two of them caught in one another's orbit, or the idea that destiny had something else in mind for the three of them, a future where someone's heart ended up broken.

And here Jim had thought the Ambassador's version of his destiny had sounded pretty good, filled as it was by a captaincy and the _Enterprise_ and friendship.

But then, destiny always sounded pretty good until it wasn't on your side anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

Jim groaned. "Two days of bed rest? Seriously?"

"Yes, and I don't want to hear your bitching." Bones gathered up the jumble of medical equipment on Jim's desk and shoved it back its case. "No trips to the bridge, no beaming down to the planet, no crawling around with Scotty in the Jeffries tubes. You need to rest for that concussion to heal. Anything that can't be done laying in your bed or sitting at your computer console is up to Spock."

"Does Spock know this?"

"It's at Spock's insistence."

"This is mutiny, isn't it? The two of you are conspiring against me."

Bones just rolled his eyes and stalked to the door. "I'll be back later on to check on you."

"Tyrant," Jim muttered, glaring as the door hissing closed behind him. He slumped down in his desk chair, head on the back, and pushed himself back and forth with the tip of one toe, staring up at the bright white ceiling. The earthquake, concussion, and looters didn't kill him, but two days confined to his quarters on bed rest just might. He had a feeling Bones was going to bully Spock into sending only the barest minimum of work his way, just enough to make it seem like he was actively captaining the ship, which wasn't going to fool him, by the way. Maybe he'd test that bridge mending he managed with Uhura and see if she could put a bug in Spock's ear, or failing that, at least entertain him for an hour or--

Jim suddenly slapped his foot flat on the floor to stop the swing of the chair and sat up, his nearly healed concussion protesting with a distant throb of easily ignored pain.

"Hoshi Sato," he said to the empty room.

He had forgotten about her in the uproar following their timely rescue. The Elagabalans had been extremely grateful to Jim and his crew for helping to catch the smugglers, and the _Enterprise_ was due to stay in orbit another week to provide humanitarian relief for the areas devastated by the earthquake. There had been a lot of discussion with the Elagabalan government and Starfleet command since his return to the ship, or there had been until Bones had had sharp words with him about his health and how concussions needed rest, damn it, then confined him to his quarters and laid into Pike and whoever else from command had the misfortune of being on the comms that day. But hey, if Bones was going to run interference and prevent him from doing his job, he was going to have to entertain himself somehow, even if it was just this side of prying.

Besides, Hoshi Sato was the reason why the _Enterprise_ had the best communications officer in the fleet. He was curious to know what it was about this woman that had compelled Uhura to work so hard for so long for an assignment on the _Enterprise_ and to set aside her intense personal dislike of its commanding officer after Pike's promotion.

Jim turned towards the console, calling up the ship's library databanks and digging around until he found the official Starfleet dossier on Sato.

It turned out she was exactly as awesome as Uhura thought she'd been. A linguist with over forty languages, one of the contributing developers of the universal translator, but also dishonorably discharged for breaking the arm of a superior officer trying to break up her floating poker game. A smart girl who could break a man's arm – that was hot. She was reinstated for the _Enterprise-NX01_'s first mission under Archer's command – that Archer, as in the first president of the Federation Archer – so, yeah, Sato was one hell of a hero to have.

She was also one of the 4,000 colonists slaughtered during the famine on Tarsus IV, which seemed a damned undeserving end for her. That had been in 2246, and Jim had been about 13 at the time, just beginning to explore his delinquent inclinations, while all those people, including Hoshi Sato, were being dragged out of their homes into the streets of the colony and shot. Uhura must have been devastated when she learned about her death; he wondered if at ten she had fully understood what had happened to her hero, if she had ever been able to make sense of a murder committed at the whim of a clearly insane governor a mere week before relief arrived. He could barely make sense of his own father's death, one which had been a sacrifice to save the lives of 800 other people, but to comprehend that kind of senseless death on such a scale at such a young age…

Jim paused, staring blankly at the screen, something stirring in the back of his mind, some nagging detail that he couldn't quite place. He quickly replayed the conversation with Uhura in his mind - Sato had taught her Romulan, had been the reason for her desire to join Starfleet, had lived next door to Uhura when she was ten…

That nagging detail fell into place.

"No," Jim said, refocusing on Sato's file. "She couldn't have been."

With a sick sort of feeling and the need for one of his intuitive leaps to be wrong for once, he made his way into the Tarsus IV files, entering his security clearance codes over and over again as he dug deeper, reading with slowly growing horror every scrap of information that wasn't impeded by Starfleet or Federation Intelligence blocks – the history of the famine, survivor testimonies, official reports, not so official reports, pictures of a charred, unidentifiable body someone had decided was the megalomaniacal governor – and finally found that piece of information he hadn't wanted to find, but there it was anyway.

Only nine survivors had ever laid eyes on Governor Kodos, all of them children.

Nyota Uhura was one of them.

In some ways it clarified a lot of things about her. The flashback he'd witnessed under the earthquake rubble, the ration bar in her boot, that drive to be the best because hey, you never know when a famine will strike your colony, and a psychotic governor will decide you get to live while your father and the kick ass xenolinguist next door and 3,998 other colonists die because you fit his insane eugenics scheme.

And maybe, just maybe, it made you believe that you were a victim of the whims of fate…

Jim checked her file, not to pry any deeper than he already had, but just to check that she had had therapy for it, and she had, several years, plus a few sessions with Starfleet Psych while at the Academy just to make sure she was fit to serve.

That's good, he thought. That's good.

Because Tarsus IV? It wasn't quite watching your planet sucked into a black hole, but it was up there.

Now, he wished he'd never given her shit for the rations bar.

***

It took the entirety of his two days of bed rest and then some before Jim decided he couldn't live with himself, not when what he thought was harmless prying had led to the bloody and suddenly personal history of the Tarsus IV massacre. He felt like he had overstepped his boundaries and violated Uhura in a way that casually eyeing her legs in the mess hall or seeing her undress while under Gaila's bed hadn't, and the urge to come clean to her was nearly overwhelming.

It took him two additional days to work up the courage to say something to her, afraid that all of their recent bridge building would be for naught, once she learned how deeply he had pried into her life. But he wanted to be honest with her, compelled by feelings of affection and admiration and respect, returned or not, and so he finally sucked it up and asked her to stay behind after the crew's daily meeting about their aid efforts on the planet below.

Uhura looked uneasy as the others filed out past her, though she did smile encouragingly at Spock as he left, glancing between them both with what passed as an expression of curiosity among Vulcans.

Jim wondered what she had told Spock about their time in the museum, if their discussion on destiny had come up, and what exactly he had thought of it if it had. If Jim got out of this with any kind of amicable rapport with Uhura that might be the next private discussion he had with her. Or maybe not. He hadn't had time to ponder it himself.

"What did you need, Captain?" she asked, drawing him out of his idle thoughts. There was no sarcasm in her voice, but she did sound impatient and not a little bit suspicious.

Jim nervously dropped his eyes to the PADD in front of him, fiddled with his stylus a moment, then irritated by his uncharacteristic squeamishness, took a deep breath, and said, "I looked up Hoshi Sato."

Uhura tried to look cool and calm and utterly professional, but he could see anxiety in the way she tensed and drew herself up, as if preparing to take a blow. "Oh?"

"I didn't go looking, really--" Now, Jim was just being an ass, and he knew it. "Okay, I did. I was curious about Hoshi Sato, so I looked her up and--"

"You found out I was on Tarsus IV." Her voice was flat, cold. Jim could hear those newly built bridges between them crashing down and burning with the white hot intensity of a supernova as they went.

"Yeah. I just wanted you to know I found out. Seemed like the right thing to do with us starting over. But I didn't intend to pry that deeply, I promise. It just happened. I'm sorry and it-"

"Yeah. Okay, Kirk." Uhura's sharp tone cut through his babbling. "Just shut up for a minute."

Jim shut up and waited while she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and when she looked at him again, he was startled to see panic in her eyes. "Have you told anyone? Because you can't tell anyone."

Jim was surprised. Anger at his snooping, some sharp words, his name delivered with a sarcastic edge - he had expected all of those. But not desperation of all things and certainly not fear.

"No, of course not." He paused, considering. "But you do know that Bones probably has access to that information, if he hasn't read it already, right?"

"Yeah, I know." She relaxed a little, but not enough for his liking. "I'm not worried about him, actually. He wouldn't care. I just don't need the whole ship to know. Everybody always gets weird about it. Either things become awkward, or they start asking me questions, as if I want to talk about how my father went out to try to help the other colonists fight off Kodos's men and never came back, or how Hoshi begged me not to look when they pulled me out of her arms to execute her. They can't possibly understand it. They just want the gossip."

She sounded bitter, disgusted; Jim could sympathize. "I know exactly where you're coming from."

She arched an eyebrow at him, indignant; clearly she didn't recall Jim's original claim to fame.

"What, you're the only one who grew up in the shadow of a major catastrophe?" Now, he was the one who was indignant. "Remember, I'm the baby born during the attack on the Kelvin."

Her eyes darted away. "Sorry." Her voice was small, very un-Uhura-like. "I always forget about that."

Damn it. He could be such an ass sometimes. Here he was, snapping at her over his childhood traumas when they seemed so small and petty compared to what Uhura had gone through.

All of his indignation bled right out of him. "No, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to one up you. I just happen know what it's like to want to be left alone. I can't tell you how many people have felt free to walk up to me and ask me about my father, as if being able to look George Kirk up in a databank somewhere gives them a free pass to say anything they want."

Uhura didn't say anything, just sat there with her eyes downcast. Jim wasn't even sure she was listening to him. The silence was hard and uncomfortable, but she was actually the first person in a long time that could possibly understand what it was like growing up as an object of curiosity, so he kept going, trusting her to tell him to shut up like she always did whenever she wanted him to stop talking.

"The entire month of November at the Academy was absolute agony. By the second week, all the first years would have finally gotten to the _Kelvin_ in the History of the Federation class, and for a few weeks after, I would have all these wide-eyed first year cadets whispering about me whenever I walked by. A few of the really stupid ones would ask me what it was like to be George Kirk's son. How the hell should I know?" Jim was getting angry just thinking about it. "I was never his son. He died before I could be, and I got Frank instead."

Uhura finally looked up, nodding, her eyes fixed on some point to Jim's left. "It's the ones who are in it for the titillation that bother me the most. If they catch me on a bad day, I'll snap, and tell them what it was like to be hungry all the time, the relentless, grinding exhaustion of it. Or what it was like that last night hiding with Hoshi and her husband after my dad disappeared, listening to stories about the _Enterprise_ and reciting Romulan conjugations, while in the distance all we could hear were phasers firing and people screaming. Or if I'm feeling really savage, I'll describe to them in detail what it was like seeing Kodos's men push an elderly Japanese woman to her knees and execute her with a phaser to her temple." Her eyes came back to him then, full of anger and bitterness. "And maybe it's petty, but it always feels good to see their embarrassment when they realize what they've asked."

"Oh, yeah." He grinned, recalling how satisfying it could be to remind people that you just don't wander up and ask about personal trauma. "Their eyes get wide and they start stuttering and trying to backpedal. And sometimes women, especially the young ones, will cover their mouths and say 'Oh my God, I am _so_ sorry.' That never gets old."

Uhura smiled, but there was no mirth in it, only bitterness and anger. "I like it when they blush. It tells me they're actually embarrassed, and not just being polite once they realize they've overstepped their bounds."

Jim nodded. "Blushing is good. I made an Admiral Komac blush, once, after he spent about ten minutes gushing over my dad's heroic sacrifice then had the gall to tell me how lucky I was to have George Kirk for a father. I won't repeat what I said, but Pike almost dressed me down for it, until I told him what our conversation had been about. Komac hasn't liked me since."

"I've had officers approach me, too." Uhura shifted as if crossing her legs under the table. "Last year, Commander Fitzpatrick asked me to talk to one of his seminar classes about Tarsus IV. I don't know how he found out I had been there, but as soon as I asked him if he would like me to describe what it was like to starve for three months or explain what it was like to hear to the screams of people watching their families shot dead in the streets execution style, he went bright red and walked away without another word. Spock was with me at the time, and I think that was the only time I've ever seen him look so surprised."

Jim tried to conjure that image, Spock looking surprised, but his brain simply could not do it. "So Spock knows?"

Uhura shrugged halfheartedly. "After that, I had to explain it."

And Spock could have a similar experience first hand now that his planet was gone, and that was one thing Jim would never wish on anyone.

They fell silent again, and this time it was easier, less uncomfortable, and Jim was starting to think maybe all of those new bridges hadn't been destroyed after all. But there was one thing he still wanted to know, and he may never have the nerve to ask about it again.

"I do have one question, though." At Uhura's sharp look, Jim threw up his hands. "It's not about Tarsus IV, I swear. Well, it is, sort of, but it's more about something that happened when we were trapped in the museum."

She was not pleased. "If it's about the rations bar, yeah, that's because of the famine. I always take something with me when I'm going to unfamiliar places."

"I figured that, but no. A different question."

She looked suspicious, but she nodded. "Go ahead."

"When we were at that first entrance under the parliament house, and you were telling me about the person screaming in the rubble, you sort of… went somewhere else. Was it Tarsus IV?"

Uhura pursed her lips together and nodded. Jim thought that was all he was going to get on the matter, but then she started talking again. "When they finally came to our building and killed Hoshi and her husband, they took me back to the governor's residence and locked me in a room with four other children. We were in there for days. Every now and then they brought another kid in, all of us orphaned by Kodos's purge, and the entire time, it seemed like all we could hear in the distance was screaming."

She paused, her eyes distant, gone to that place again, that room with the other children on Tarsus IV. But then she was back as quickly as she had gone, and gave Jim a brittle, ironic smile. "You know, I can march up to a Spock and demand my place on the _Enterprise_, I can watch a planet get sucked into a black hole and not be paralyzed by horror, I can face down a bunch of criminals with only a severely injured Starfleet captain as my ally, but as soon as I heard that screaming, I shut down. It was like I was back there again, stuck in that room with eight other children, and all I could hear were people dying in the streets."

She straightened suddenly, and fixed Jim with a defiant look. "And you can't tell anyone, Kirk. I know it's hard for you to stop anyone from finding out about your father, but I have a little bit of privacy left, and I'd like to keep it that way."

He might have been offended that she thought he would go gossiping about it, but he knew how it was to live in fear that yet one more person might ask you insensitive questions about something that had so horribly scarred you. "I won't. Promise."

That silence again. Uhura's defiance slipped away and she sat unmoving, studying her hands in her lap, her mouth turned down at the corners. Jim watched her, marveling at how they'd started off antagonists in a bar in Iowa and ended up here, swapping war stories and bonding over childhood traumas.

The bridges between them seemed strong and steady, and he thought there might even be a new one in the mix, so on impulse he said, "What do you do on Sunday nights?"

She looked up, blinking in surprise. "What?"

"When Spock has the bridge during beta shift on Sunday nights, what do you do?"

She shrugged. "Read. Work out in the gym. It depends."

"Alone?"

"Usually." She narrowed his eyes, suspicious again. "Why?"

"You should come to our poker game."

Her eyebrows went up in surprise. "Poker game?"

"Yeah. I play poker with Bones, Sulu, and Scotty on Sunday nights."

"What, no Chekov?"

"Not since we figured out he counts cards, the little sneak."

That got a laugh out of her, an honest laugh, one that lit up her face and scattered her personal demons to the winds. She was always beautiful, had that whole untouchable ice queen thing going for her, but when she laughed so easily like that, it softened her, made her shine. "Did you really?"

"We did. That's why he's on the beta duty shift with Spock on Sundays now. You should come. Sulu and Bones are terrible players, so you could go home with the winnings if you can outwit me and Scotty."

"Well, that is tempting, but I don't know. Maybe."

"Look, just consider it. Rec room three, Sunday at 1900. Bring a bottle of something to go in the pot."

She hesitated. "I don't know."

Jim shrugged, and let it go. If she came, he wanted her to come because she chose to, not because she felt pressured. "Well, think about it."

"I will," she said, and surprisingly, Jim believed her.

***

Uhura did show up on Sunday evening, out of uniform and a bottle of Jack in hand. Jim was secretly thrilled to see her, and the others welcomed her with comfortable familiarity, though he suspected that they thought she was an easy target.

They quickly learned their mistake.

At about three hands in, Bones threw down his cards. "Damn it, Jim. She'll clean us out."

Scotty grinned at her in appreciation over his cards. "Aye, the lass is a right little card shark."

Jim already knew this from the poker nights he'd arranged for the Xenolinguistics Club, back when pursuing Uhura had been a casual and ongoing hobby, and she was still gnashing her teeth because he had managed to get himself elected treasurer, but it was amusing as hell to watch the others figure it out.

Bones glared at Jim. "Yeah, he knew that when he invited her."

Jim put on his best innocent face. "I didn't know, honestly, Bones. I just thought she might like the company."

Jim shared a conspiratorial look with Uhura, who just smiled her sinister little smile and raised the ante, while next to her, Sulu folded again with a sigh of defeat.

A couple hours later, Spock appeared in the doorway during his dinner break, claiming curiosity about the human recreational practice of poker night, though Jim suspected he was really there to see what kind of corruptive influence he and the others were having on his girlfriend.

Uhura's face positively lit up when she saw him, and Spock's lips very nearly turned upwards into a smile, and she must think him a soulless bastard if she was worried he would ever intentionally destroy that.

"Here, sit down." Uhura patted the empty seat next to her. "I'll explain how to play."

"I am aware of the rules of poker, Nyota," Spock said, but did as she said, pulling the chair closer to her as he sat.

"I know, but those are the rules. How you actually play the game is something else entirely."

She launched into an explanation of bluffing and tells, and Bones immediately started grumbling about how Spock had a natural poker face, and how many card sharks did the _Enterprise_ actually need? Scotty just chuckled and scooped up the cards to shuffle them, while Sulu idly rearranged his dwindling stacks of poker chips, glancing every now and then at Uhura and Spock in amusement.

Jim himself sat back and watched them. Uhura was earnestly explaining tells, using Bones as an example much to his irritation, and Spock was listening intently, his focus solely and completely on her. They weren't touching, but they were close, their bodies mere inches apart and angled towards each other. Jim had figured out a while back that this kind of proximity for Spock and Uhura was what holding hands would be for other couples, and they were so adorable and sweet and committed to each other that he couldn't believe that Uhura thought destiny was going to sweep in and destroy what they had or that Jim would ever willingly he a part of that. He _liked_ Spock and Uhura, they were his crew and seemed to be becoming his friends, and he just wouldn't do it, wouldn't willingly consent to being a home wrecker, no matter how many people popped in from other timelines to tell him differently.

Spock must have felt his eyes on him, because he looked up then, meeting Jim's gaze with one of his intense, hard stares. Jim stared back, unable to interpret that look and not entirely sure that he wanted to. Then Uhura, realizing that she no longer had Spock's complete attention, looked up with a frown, and Jim quickly dropped his eyes to the cards Scotty was dealing to him, his heart pounding.

Spock asked Uhura something about bluffing, and Uhura went back to her explanation, and then everyone was picking up their cards and making bets, and Jim went along with it, only barely noting the cards in his hand, tossing in his chips without really paying attention. His mind was elsewhere, on other things like friendship and basic human decency and his utter and furious refusal to believe that he had no control over his own fate. There was a good chance that Uhura was just being paranoid, that she had misinterpreted everything, but if she was right, he had a lot of thinking to do.

Because hacking destiny? That was going to be a hell of a lot harder than hacking the _Kobayashi Maru_.


End file.
